“God save the king!”

The bay shied suddenly, standing with nostrils a-quiver; and I had to look closely to make out the little brown dot of humanity clad in russet homespun crouching in the path, its childish eyes wide with fear and its lips parted to shrill again:  “God save the king!”

I threw a stiff leg over the cantle and swung down to go on one knee to my stout challenger.  I can never make you understand, my dears, how the sight of this helpless waif appearing thus unaccountably in the heart of the great forest mellowed and softened me.  ’Twas a little maid, not above three or four years old, and with a face that Master Raphael might have taken as a pattern for one of his seraphs.

“What know you of the king, little one?” I asked.

“Gran’dad told me,” she lisped.  “If I was to see a soldier-man I must say, quick, ‘God save the king,’ or ’haps he’d eat me.  Is—­is you hungry, Mister Soldier-man?”

“Truly I am that, sweetheart; but I don’t eat little maids.  Where is your grandfather?”

“Ain’t got any gran’favver; I said ‘gran’dad.’”

“Well, your gran’dad, then; can you take me to him?”

“I don’t know.  ’Haps you’d eat him.”

“No fear of that, my dear.  Do I look as if I ate people?”

She gave me a long scrutiny out of the innocent eyes and then put up two little brown hands to be taken.  “I tired” she said; and my sore heart went warm within me when I took her in my arms and cuddled her.  After a long-drawn sigh of contentment, she said:  “My name Polly; what’s yours?”

“You may call me Jack, if you please—­Captain Jack, if that comes the easier.  And now will you let me take you to your gran’dad?”

She nodded, and I spoke to the bay and mounted, still holding her closely in my arms.

“Tell me quickly which way to go, Polly,” I said; for besides being, as I would fear, far out of the way to Gilbert Town, the last hilltop to the rear had given me another sight of my shadowing pursuers riding hard as if they meant to overtake me.

The little maid sat up straight on the saddle horn and looked about her as if to get her bearings.

“That way,” she said, pointing short to the right; and I wheeled the horse into a blind path that wound in and out among the trees for a long half mile, to end at a little clearing on the banks of a small stream.

In the midst of the clearing was a rude log cabin; and in the open doorway stood a man bent and aged, a patriarchal figure with white hair falling to his shoulders and a snowy beard such as Aaron might have worn.  At sight of me the old watcher disappeared within the house, but a moment later he was out again, fingering the lock of an ancient Queen’s-arm.

I drew rein quickly, and the little maid sat up and saw the musket.

“Don’t shoot, gran’dad!” she cried.  “He’s Cappy Jack, and he doesn’t eat folkses.”