“Then we’ll follow,” says Nick, beginning to pace again.  Suddenly, at a cry from the widow, he stopped and stared at me, a light in his eye like a point of steel.  His hand slipped to his waist.

“A spy,” he said, and turned and smiled at the lady, who was watching him with a kind of fascination; “but damnably cool,” he continued, looking at me.  “I wonder if he thinks to outride me on that beast?  Look you, sir,” he cried, as Mrs. Brown’s negro came back struggling with a deep-ribbed, high-crested chestnut that was making half circles on his hind legs, “I’ll give you to the edge of the woods, and lay you a six-forty against a pair of moccasins that you never get back to Tipton.”

“God forbid that I ever do,” I answered fervently.

“What,” he exclaimed, “and you here with him on this sneak’s errand!”

“I am here with him on no errand,” said I.  “He and his crew came on me a quarter of an hour since at the edge of the clearing.  Mr. Temple, I am here to find you, and to save time I will ride with you.”

“Egad, you’ll have to ride like the devil then,” said he, and he stooped and snatched the widow’s hand and kissed it with a daring gallantry that I had thought to find in him.  He raised his eyes to hers.

“Good-by, Mr. Temple,” she said,—­there was a tremor in her voice,—­“and may you save our Jack!”

He snatched the bridle from the boy, and with one leap he was on the rearing, wheeling horse.  “Come on,” he cried to me, and, waving his hat at the lady on the porch, he started off with a gallop up the trail in the opposite direction from that which Tipton’s men had taken.

All that I saw of Mr. Nicholas Temple on that ride to Turner’s was his back, and presently I lost sight of that.  In truth, I never got to Turner’s at all, for I met him coming back at the wind’s pace, a huge, swarthy, determined man at his side and four others spurring after, the spume dripping from the horses’ mouths.  They did not so much as look at me as they passed, and there was nothing left for me to do but to turn my tired beast and follow at any pace I could make towards Jonesboro.

It was late in the afternoon before I reached the town, the town set down among the hills like a caldron boiling over with the wrath of Franklin.  The news of the capture of their beloved Sevier had flown through the mountains like seeds on the autumn wind, and from north, south, east, and west the faithful were coming in, cursing Tipton and Carolina as they rode.

I tethered my tired beast at the first picket, and was no sooner on my feet than I was caught in the hurrying stream of the crowd and fairly pushed and beaten towards the court-house.  Around it a thousand furious men were packed.  I heard cheering, hoarse and fierce cries, threats and imprecations, and I knew that they were listening to oratory.  I was suddenly shot around the corner of a house, saw the orator himself, and gasped.