“Nay, then, Mistress Margery, you are always taking an ell of meaning for my inch of speech.  ’Tis I who should do the ridding.”

“Mon Dieu!” she cried, in a sudden burst of petulance; “I am sick to death of all this!  Is there no way out of this coil that is strangling us both, Captain Ireton?”

“I had thought to make a way three days ago; did so make it, but you kept me from walking in it.  Yet that way is still open—­if you will but drop a word in my Lord’s ear when you go below stairs.”

“Oh, yes—­a fine thing; the wife betray the husband!” This with another lip-curl of scorn.  “I have some shreds and patches of pride left, sir, if you have not.”

“Then free me of my obligation to you and let me do it myself.  I am well enough to hang.”

“And so make me a consenting accomplice?  Truly, as I have said before, you have a most knightly soul, Captain Ireton.”

I closed my eyes in very weariness.

“You are hard to please, my lady.”

“You have not to try to please me, sir.  I am going away—­to-night.”

“Going away?” I echoed.  “Whither, if I may ask?”

“My father has taken protection and we shall go south with the army.  As Lord Cornwallis says, Mecklenburg is a hornets’ nest of rebellion, and in an hour or two after we are gone you will be amongst your friends.”

She made to leave me now, but I would not let her go without trying the last blunt-pointed arrow in the quiver of expedients.

“Stay a moment,” I begged.  “You are leaving the untangling of this coil you speak of to a chance bullet on a battle-field.  Had you ever thought that the Church can undo what the Church has done?”

Again I had that bitter laugh which was to rankle afterward in memory.

“You are a most desperate, pertinacious man, Captain Ireton.  Failing all else, you would even storm Heaven itself to gain your end,” she scoffed; then, at the very pitch-point of the scornful outburst she put her face in her hands and fell a-sobbing as if her heart would break.

I knew not what to say or do, and ended, man-like, by saying and doing nothing.  And so, still crying softly, she let herself out at the wainscot door, and this was our leave-taking.

XLIV

HOW WE CAME TO THE BEGINNING OF THE END

It was on the third day of December, a cheerless and comfortless day at the close of the most inclement autumn I ever remember, that the patriot Army of the South was paraded on the court-house common in Charlotte to listen to the reading of General Gates’s final order, the order announcing the arrival of Major-general Greene from Washington’s headquarters to take over the command of the field forces in the Carolinas.

As members of Colonel William Washington’s light-horse, Richard Jennifer and I were both present at this installation of the new field commander; and it was here that we both had our first sight of Nathaniel Greene, the “Hickory Quaker.”