“Behold four witless brute beasts, Mistress Madge—­two horses and two asses,” he said.  And then to old Anthony:  “Open the door, Tony, and invite the gentlemen in.”

But Margery was before him.  Ah, my dears, a man’s wit is like a matchlock, fizzing and sputtering its way noisily to find the powder whilst the enemy hath time to ride up and saber the musketeer; but a woman’s is like the spark in a tinder-box—­a quick snip of flint and steel and you have your fire.  In a flash my lady had torn down the heavy curtains from an inner doorway and was carpeting a horse path for us to the rear.

“Quick!” she cried; “lead them gently, for the love of heaven!”

She went before us, padding the way with whatever came first to hand, rugs, curtains, table-coverings, and I know not what besides; and by the time the British troopers were hammering at the outer door, we were deep within the old mansion and had made shift to drag the unwilling horses by one and two-step descents to a room half under and half out of ground, which served as a sort of ante-dungeon to the wine cellar.

Here I thought we might be safe for the moment, but not so my lady.  Calling Dick to help her—­in all the fierce haste of it I marked that she called to Dick and not to me—­she unlocked and opened the door to the wine vault, and in a trice we two and the luckless horses were safely jailed in pitchy darkness, with the stout oaken door slammed behind us, the bolt shot in the lock, and the key withdrawn, as we could see by the spot of light which came through the keyhole.

Richard was the first to break the grave-like silence of our dungeon.

“Lord!” said he; “did ever you see such sharp-wit work in all your adventures?  What a soldier’s wife she’d make!”

I smiled at that, being safe to smile in the darkness.  For was she not a soldier’s wife?  I hugged that saying as we cling to the thing that is slipping from us.  True, I was here to give her freely over to another and a better soldier; but while she was mine I would claim her, in my heart, at least.

The excitement of the narrow escape somewhat overpast, we sat long on the edge of a wine-bin, speculating in whispers as to what would befall, and listening vainly for the footsteps which would forecast our release or our capture by the enemy.  But when no sounds, threatening or encouraging, came from the upper world, we groped about till we found the cellar candle, lighted it with flint and steel and tinder-box, and took a survey of our jail.

’Twas the same old cavernous wine vault of my youthful remembrance, such an one as has not its mate in all Carolina to this good day, as I firmly believe.  My father’s hobby was to build for all eternity; and this stone-arched cellarage was more like a cathedral crypt than a store-room for a country gentleman’s table-stock of wines.

Dick held the candle aloft and scanned the bottle racks, none so greatly depleted as they might have been, had any hand but that close-fisted one of Gilbert Stair’s taken the key in charge after my father.