“I am to be missed, too, am I, Betty?” he inquired, leaning toward her.

“You, Bruce?—­Oh, I shall miss you, too—­dreadfully—­but then, perhaps in five years, when you come back—­”

“Five years!” cried Carrington, but he understood, something of what was passing in her mind, and laughed shortly.  “Five years, Betty?” he repeated, dwelling on the numeral.

Betty hesitated and looked thoughtful.  Presently she stole a surreptitious glance at Carrington from under her long lashes, and went on slowly, as though she were making careful choice of her words.

“When you come back in three years, Bruce—­”

Carrington still regarded her fixedly.  There was a light in his black eyes that seemed to penetrate to the most secret recesses of her heart and soul.

“Three years, Betty?” he repeated again.

Betty, her eyes cast down, twisted her rein nervously between her slim, white fingers, but Carrington’s steady glance never left her sweet face, framed by its halo of bright hair.  She stole another look at him from beneath her dark lashes.

“Three years, Betty?” he prompted.

“Bruce, don’t stare at me that way, it makes me forget what I was going to say!  When you come, back—­next year—­” and then she lifted her eyes to his and he saw that they were full of sudden tears.  “Bruce, don’t go away—­don’t go away at all—­”

Carrington slipped from the saddle and stood at her side.

“Do you mean that, Betty?” he asked.  He took her hands loosely in his and relentlessly considered her crimsoned face.  “I reckon it will always be right hard to refuse you anything—­here is one settler the Purchase will never get!” and he laughed softly.

“It was the Purchase—­you were going there!” she cried.

“No, I wasn’t, Betty; that notion died its natural death long ago.  When we are sure you will be safe at Belle Plain with just the Cavendishes, I am going into Raleigh to wait as best I can until spring.”  He spoke so gravely, that she asked in quick alarm.

“And then, Bruce—­what?”

“And then—­Oh, Betty, I’m starving—­” All in a moment he lifted her slender figure in his arms, gathering her close to him.  “And then, this—­and this—­and this, sweetheart—­and more—­and—­oh, Betty!  Betty!”

When Murrell was brought to trial his lawyers were able to produce a host of witnesses whose sworn testimony showed that so simple a thing as perjury had no terrors for them.  His fight for liberty was waged in and out of court with incredible bitterness, and, as judge and jury were only human, the outlaw escaped with the relatively light sentence of twelve years’ imprisonment; he died, however, before the expiration of his term.

The judge, where he returned to Raleigh, resumed his own name of Turberville, and he allowed it to be known that he would not be offended by the prefix of General.  During his absence he had accumulated a wealth of evidence of undoubted authenticity, with the result that his claim against the Fentress estate was sustained by the courts, and when The Oaks with its stock and slaves was offered for sale, he, as the principal creditor, was able to buy it in.