“Now you know wherein our weakness lies, Captain Ireton,” he said.  “There goes as true a man and as keen a shot as ever pulled trigger.  Let him fight in his own way, and he’ll take cover and name his man for every bullet in his pouch.  But as for yielding to decent authority, or standing against trained troops in open field—­” He shrugged again and turned to tighten his saddle-girth.

“I see,” said I. Then I asked him of his plans and intendings, and was told that he and his handful were a-march to join General Rutherford, who was gone to the Forks of Yadkin to break up some Tory embodiment thereabouts.

“You have your work cut out to dodge the British light-horse, Captain Forney,” said I; capping the venture by telling him what little I knew of Tarleton’s dispositions, and also of the Indian-arming plot I had overheard.

“We’ll dodge the redcoats, never you fear; we’re at our best in that,” he rejoined, carelessly.  “And as to the Cherokee upstirring, that’s an old story.  The king’s men have tried it twice and they have not yet caught Jack Sevier or Jimmie Robertson a-napping.  Ease your mind on that score, Captain Ireton, and come along with us, if you have nothing better to do.  I can promise you hard living, and hard fighting enough to keep it in countenance.”

At this I was brought down to some consideration of the present and its demands.  As fortune’s wheel had twirled, I had my life, to be sure; but by the having of it was made the basest traitor to my friend—­to Jennifer, and no whit less to Margery.

’Twas out of any thought that I should take the field against the common enemy, leaving this tangled web of mystery and misery behind.  In sheerest decency I owed it first to Jennifer to make a swift and frank confession of the ill-concluded tale of happenings.  That done, I owed it equally to him and Margery to find some way to set aside the midnight marriage.

So I fell back upon my wound for an excuse, telling the captain that I was not yet fit to take the field—­which was true enough.  Whereupon he and his men set me well beyond the danger of immediate pursuit and we parted company.

When I was left alone I had no plan that reached beyond the day’s end.  Since to go to Jennifer House by daylight would be to run my neck afresh into the noose, I saw nothing for it but to lie in hiding till nightfall.  The hiding place that promised best was the old hunting lodge in the forest, and thitherward I turned my face.

It was a wise man who said that he who goes with heavy heart drags heavy feet as well; but while I live I shall remember how that saying clogged the path for me that morning, making the shrub-sweet summer air grow thick and lifeless as I toiled along.  For sober second thought, and the unnerving reaction which comes upon the heels of some sharp peril overpast, left me aghast at the coil in which a tricky fate had entangled me.

The second thought made plain the dispiteous hardness of it all, showing me how I had reasoned like a boy in planning for retrieval.  Would Jennifer believe my tale, though I should swear it out word for word on the Holy Evangelists?  I doubted it; and striving to see it through his eyes, was made to doubt it more.  For death should have been my justifier, and death had played me false.