The old marksman sprang up in a fury of wrath.  “Dad blast ye for a pair of aim-sp’ilin’—­”

A roar of musketry cut the rebuke in half, and a storm of bullets smote through the branches overhead.  A falling bough knocked my hat off, and I stooped to recover it.  When I rose, Dick was clipping the old man tightly in his arms.  Yeates’s belt was cut, and a little oozing well-spring of red was slowly soaking the fringe of his hunting-shirt.

“Ease me down, Cap’n Dick; ease me down.  The old man’s done for, this time, ez I allow—­spang in the innards.  Ease me down and get off for yerselves, if so be ye can, im—­me—­jit—­”

The wagging jaw dropped and the keen old eyes went dim and sightless.  Dick’s oath was more a sob than an imprecation; and now it was I who said:  “Come on—­the living before the dead!” and so we made the well-nigh hopeless dash for the horses.

How we rode free out of that hurly-burly at the ford-head you must figure for yourselves, if you can.  The men of the British vanguard were all about us when we got to the scrub oak thicket and mounted, but no one of them raised a hand to stay us.  I have thought since that mayhap they took us for a pair of their own Tory allies who were not above wearing the stolen uniforms of the dead.  Be that as it may, we rode away unhindered, Dick in all the bravery of his captain’s slashings, and I in light-horse buff and blue, taking the road toward the manor house because that was the only one open to us, and ambling leisurely till we were beyond the sight and sound of the victors at the ford.

But once at large, we put spurs to our horses in true ritter fashion; and we had galloped half way to Appleby house before Dick said: 

“Now we are well out of that, what next?  We can not go to Margery with the whole British army at our heels.”

“Nay, but we shall, if only for a short half-hour,” I asserted.  Then, as once before, I gave him my best bow.  “For the last time, it may be, let me play the lord of the manor.  You are very welcome to my father’s demesne, Richard, and to all of its holdings.”

“All?” said he, giving me a quick eye-shot as we pressed on side by side.

“Yes, all,” said I; and I meant it in good faith.  He should have the lady, too; that precious holding of the old manse without whom my father’s acres would be but a bauble to be lost or won indifferently.

“Then you do not love Madge more?” he queried, his eye kindling.

“Nay, I did not say that.  But I did say the other; that you should have the house and all its holdings.”

We were cantering up the oak-sentried avenue to that door which Gilbert Stair had once sought to keep against us with his bell-mouthed blunderbuss.  There was no sign of any living thing about the place; and when we had no answer to our sword-hilt knockings on the door, the lad turned upon me with a flash of anger in his eyes and his lip a-curl.