He turned upon me like a lion at bay.

“What have you done with her?”

“Peace, you foolish boy.  I am not her keeper.  Her father took her to Charlotte on the very day you saw her safe at home.”

He reined up short in the narrow way.  “So?” he said, most bitingly.  “And that is why you take the embassy to Lord Cornwallis and fub me off with the one to Gates.  By heaven, Captain Ireton, we shall change roles here and now!”

Ah, my dears, the love-madness is a curious thing.  Here was a man who had saved my life so many times I had lost the count of them, feeling for my throat in the murk of that October night as my bitterest foeman might.

And surely it was the love-demon in me that made me say:  “You think I am standing in your way, Richard Jennifer?  Well, so I am; for whilst I live you may not have her.  Why don’t you draw and cut me down?”

’Twas then Satan marked my dear lad for his very own.

“On guard!” he cried; “draw and defend yourself!” and with that the great claymore leaped from its sheath to flash in the starlight.

What with his reining back for space to whirl the steel I had the time to parry the descending blow.  But at the balancing instant the brother-hating devil had the upper hand, whispering me that here was the death I coveted; that Margery might have her lover, if so she would, with her husband’s blood upon his head.

So I sat motionless while the broadsword cut its circle in air and came down; and then I knew no more till I came to with a bees’ hive buzzing in my ears, to find myself lying in the dank grass at the path side.  My head was on Richard’s knee, and he was dabbling it with water in his soaked kerchief.

XLI

HOW I PLAYED THE HOST AT MY OWN FIRESIDE

You may be sure that by now the anger gale had blown itself out, that the madness had passed for both of us; and when I stirred, Richard broke out in a tremulous babblement of thanksgiving for that he had not slain me outright.

“I was mad, Jack; as mad as any Bedlamite,” he would say.  “The devil whispered me that you would fight; that you wanted but a decent excuse to thrust me out of the way.  And when I saw you would not stir, ’twas too late to do aught but turn the flat of the blade.  Oh, God help me!  I’ll never let a second thought of that little Tory prat-a-pace send me to hell again.”

“Nay,” said I; “no such rash promises, I pray you, Richard.  We are but two poor fools, with the love of a woman set fair between us.  But you need not fight me for it.  The love is yours—­not mine.”

“Don’t say that, Jack; I’m selfish enough to wish it were true; as it is not.  I know whereof I speak.”

“No,” I denied, struggling to my feet; “it has been yours from the first, Dick.  I am but a sorry interloper.”

For a moment he was all solicitude to know if my head would let me stand; but when I showed him I was no more than clumsily dizzy from the effects of the blow, he went on.