In the harkening instant there was a faint twang like the thrumming of a distant harp string, and then the grave-like silence was rent smartly by the whistling hiss of an arrow, the shaft passing evenly between us and scattering the handful of fire where it struck.

Jennifer came alive with a start, leaping up with a malediction between his teeth upon our dallying.

“Too late, by God!” he cried.  “They’ve trapped us like a pair of blind moles!” And with that he caught up the ancient broadsword, only to swear again when he found no room to swing it in.

Having the handier weapon, I slipped out before him, creeping on hands and knees till I could see the leafy screen at the den’s mouth, and the shimmering reflection of the stars upon the water beyond it.  There was no sight nor sound of any enemy, and the canoe lay safe as Jennifer had left it.

To make assurance sure, I would have scrambled to the bank above; but at the moment Jennifer hallooed softly to me, and so I crept back into the burrow.

“See here,” he said, excitedly.  “What a devil will you make of this?”

He had drawn the scattered embers together, fanning them ablaze again, and had sought and found the arrow.  It was a blunt-head reed and no war shaft.  And around the middle of it, tightly wrapped and tied with silken threads, was a little scroll of parchment.

“’Tis the Catawba’s arrow,” said Jennifer, though how he knew I could not guess; and then he cut the threads to free the scroll.

Unrolled and spread at large, the parchment proved to be that map of Captain Stuart’s that I had found and lost again.  And on the margin of it was my note to Jennifer, written in that trying moment when the bribed sentry waited at the door and my sweet lady stood trembling beside me, murmuring her “Holy Marys.”

“Read it,” said I.  “It explains itself.  Tarleton had laid me by the heels to wait for the hangman, and I would have passed the word about the Indian-arming on to you.  But my messenger was overhauled, and—­”

“Yes, yes,” he broke in; “I’ve spelled it out.  But this line added at the bottom—­surely, that is never your crabbed fist.  By heaven! ’tis in Madge’s hand!”

He knelt to hold it closer to the flickering firelight, and we deciphered it together.  It was but a line, as he had said, with neither greeting nor leave-taking, address nor signature.

“If this should come into the hands of any true-hearted gentleman”—­here was a blot as if the pen had slipped from the fingers holding it; and then, in French, the very wording of the inarticulate cry that had come to me out of the darkness and silence:  “A moi! pour l’amour de Dieu!”

We fell apart, each to his own side of the handful of embers.

“You make it out?” said I, after a moment of strained silence.

He nodded.  “She has prattled the parlez-vous to me ever since we were boy and maid together.”