“I was ordered to Varick Manor,” I said, looking at Sir George.  “Otherwise I might have followed Arnold.  As it is I cannot stay for the wedding; I must report at Stillwater, leaving by nine o’clock in the morning.”

“Lord, Ormond, what a fire-eater you have become!” he said, smiling from his abstraction.  “Are you ready to mount Ruyven’s nag and come home to a good bed and a glass of something neat?”

“Let Ruyven ride,” I said; “I need the walk, Sir George.”

“Need the walk!” he exclaimed.  “Have you not had walks enough?—­and your moccasins and buckskins in rags!”

But I could not endure to ride; a nerve-racking restlessness was on me, a desire for movement, for utter exhaustion, so that I could no longer have even strength to think.

Ruyven, protesting, climbed into his dragoon-saddle; Sir George walked beside him and I with Sir George.

Long, soft August lights lay across the leafy road; the blackberries were in heavy fruit; scarlet thimble-berries, over-ripe, dropped from their pithy cones as we brushed the sprays with our sleeves.

Sir George was saying:  “No, we have nothing more to fear from McDonald’s gang, but a scout came in, three days since, bringing word of McCraw’s outlaws who have appeared in the west—­”

He stopped abruptly, listening to a sound that I also heard; the sudden drumming of unshod hoofs on the road behind us.

“What the devil—­” he began, then cocked his rifle; I threw up mine; a shrill cock-crow rang out above the noise of tramping horses; a galloping mass of horsemen burst into view behind us, coming like an avalanche.

“McCraw!” shouted Sir George.  Ruyven fired from his saddle; Sir George’s rifle and mine exploded together; a horse and rider went down with a crash, but the others came straight on, and the cock-crow rang out triumphantly above the roar of the rushing horses.

“Ruyven!” I shouted, “ride for your life!”

“I won’t!” he cried, furiously; but I seized his bridle, swung his frightened horse, and struck the animal across the buttocks with clubbed rifle.  Away tore the maddened beast, almost unseating his rider, who lost both stirrups at the first frantic bound and clung helplessly to his saddle-pommel while the horse carried him away like the wind.

Then I sprang into the ozier thicket, Sir George at my side, and ran a little way; but they caught us, even before we reached the timber, and threw us to the ground, tying us up like basted capons with straps from their saddles.  Maltreated, struck, kicked, mauled, and dragged out to the road, I looked for instant death; but a lank creature flung me across his saddle, face downward, and, in a second, the whole band had mounted, wheeled about, and were galloping westward, ventre a terre.