Having my dismissal and reprieve I was remanded to the custody of that young Lieutenant Tybee whom you have met and known as Falconnet’s second in the duel.  Interpreting his orders liberally, he suffered me to keep my own room for the night.  I had expected manacles and a roommate guard at the least, but my gentlemanly jailer spared me both.  When he had me safe above-stairs, he barred the door upon me, set a sentry pacing back and forth in the corridor without, and another to keep an eye upon the window from below, and so left me.

There was no great need for either sentry, or for bolts and bars.  What with the night’s adventures and my scarce-healed wound, I was far sped on that road which ends against the blind wall of exhaustion, as you may well suppose.  For while a man may borrow strength of wine or rage or passion, these lenders are but pitiless usurers and will demand their pound of flesh; aye, and have it, too, when all the principal is spent.

So, when Tybee barred the door and left me with a single candle to my lighting, I was fain to fall upon the bed in utter weariness, thinking that the respite bought by my sweet lady’s humbling was more dearly bought than ever, and that the truest mercy would have been the rope and tree without this interval of waiting.

To me in this grim Doubting Castle of despair the priest came.  He was a good man and a true, this low-voiced missioner to the savages, and he would be a curster man than I who failed to give him his due meed of praise and love.  For in this dismal interval of waiting, with death so sure and near that all the air was growing chill and lifeless at its presence, he was a ready help in time of need.  If I were “heretic” to him, I swear I knew it not for aught he said or did; and though I trusted that when my time was come I should stand forth with some small simple-hearted show of courage, yet when he went away I felt I was the stronger for his coming.  And this, mark you, though I was still unshriven, and he had never named the churchly rite to me.

When he was gone I fell to wearing out the time afoot; and, lest you think me harder than I was, it may be said that while I did not make confession to the kindly priest, I hope I tried to make my peace with God in some such simpler fashion as our forebears did.  ’Twas none so great a matter, for one who lives a soldier’s life must needs be ripe for plucking hastily.

But in the final casting of accounts there was an item written down in red, and one in black, and these would not be scored across for all the travail of a soul departing.  The one in black was bitter sorrow for the fate from which I might not live to save my loved one; the one in red was this; that I should die and carry hence the knowledge that might else nip the Indian onfall in the bud.

No sooner was the priest away than I began to upbraid myself because I had not told him of this British-Indian murder plan.  And yet on second thought ’twas clear that it had been but a poor shifting of the burden to weaker shoulders; and thankless, too, for Tarleton would be sure to put him on the question-rack to make him tell of all that passed between us.