“You are pale,” cried Stephen suddenly.  “You must be very tired.  Let us sit down here while you tell me.”  And he pointed to a coil of rope at hand.  But she shook her head.

“I am not tired, thank you; I am disappointed that I can’t go back immediately, that I must wait until to-morrow, when the dispatches will be ready.”

“You need not,” he cried.  “The General shall let you go if you wish it.  I will insist upon it.  The dispatches can go some other way.  If the Governor wants news in such haste, he would do better to send us some powder to make them out of.  He was enough in a hurry to get us off, to give us something to do after we are here.”

“I should think you had something to do,” she said pointing to the battlements of Louisburg which at that distance and from that angle looked as if no shot had ever been fired against them.  “But don’t on any account speak to the General.  We are glad to do even so little for the cause.  And perhaps it’s not that that makes me pale.  I don’t know.  I have a warning hard to deliver to you.  I have come hundreds of miles to do it.  I will give it to you immediately, for you may need it at any moment.”  She drew closer to him, and laid one hand upon his arm as if to prevent his losing by any chance the words she had to say.  Her gesture had an impressiveness that made him realize as much as her face did how terribly in earnest she was.

“It must be something about Katie,” he thought.  And the vision of Lord Bulchester rose before him clearly.

“Listen,” said Elizabeth absorbed in her attempt to make him feel what she feared would seem incredible to him.  “Stray shots have picked off many superfluous kings in the world—­and men and the world not been the wiser.  This is what some one said when the war was being talked of, said at your house, and said in speaking of you.”

“Said it to you?” interposed Archdale with a quick breath.

“Oh, no, but about you, I am sure, sure, though it has taken me all this time to find it out.  And,—­oh, wait a moment,—­the man who said it was your guest then, and he is here now, else we should not have come; he is here, perhaps he is close by you every day, and he,—­he is meaning the shot for you.”  She waited a moment drawing a breath of relief that she had begun.  “You know he is your enemy?” she went on with a longing to be spared explanations.

She was spared them.

“I do know it,” said Archdale looking at her, and as she met his eyes a great relief swept over her.  Her warning had been heard and believed, she was sure of that.  She heard Archdale thanking her, and assuring her that he would give good heed to her warning.  And she had not had to tell why Edmonson hated him, she had not even been obliged to utter the name that she was coming to hate.  “Do you know?” she had asked wonderingly, and he had told it to her.  Did he know the man so thoroughly, then?  And were there other causes of hatred, possibly money causes, that had spared her?