So while the minutes of this safety-silence multiplied and there was space for sober after-thought, I fell to casting up the chances of success.  Now that Margery was gone, and with her all the fine enthusiasm that such devoted souls as hers do always radiate, it was plain enough that nothing less than a miracle could bring success.  Tarleton’s Legion was made up of veterans schooled well in border warfare, and though the bivouac seemed but a camp of motionless figures fast manacled in sleep—­I could see them strewn like dead men round the smoldering fires—­I made no doubt the sentries were alert and wakeful.  How then was any messenger of Margery’s to pass the lines, or, passing them, to come at Jennifer, who by this time would be at Jennifer House, a prisoner in all but name?

Chewing such wormwood thoughts as these, I watched and listened while the measured minutes, circling slow on leaden wings, pecked at my heart in passing, and despair, cold like a winter fog, had chilled me to the bone.  For now it came to me that while I would be saving life, mayhap I had been periling it again.  There was small doubt that if the messenger were taken with my letter, his life would pay the forfeit.  And if the fear of death should make him tell who sent him and to whom he was sent,—­I had been careful so to word the letter as to shield my correspondent,—­both Margery and Dick would be involved.

’Tis worthy of remark how, building on the simplest supposition, we seldom prophesy aright.  For all my fine-spun theories the manner of the thing that happened was all unlike the forecast.  Suddenly, and in silence, out of the ghostly shadows of the trees and into the wan moonlight of the open space beneath my window, with neither shout nor crash of sentry-gun to give me warning, came three figures riding abreast—­a man in trooper trappings on either hand, and on the led horse sandwiched in between, a woman.

You may believe my heart went cold at the sight.  I knew at once what she had done—­this fearless maid who would be loyal to her friend at any cost.  Having no messenger she could trust—­she knew it well when she had promised me—­she had taken the errand upon herself, braving a hazard that would have daunted many a man.

I thought the worst had surely now befallen, and wished a hundred times that I had died before it came to this.  But there was worse in store.  Her captors passed the word while yet I looked and choked with rage and grief; and then the bivouac buzzed alive, and men came running, some with arms and some with torches, these last to flash the light upon her and to jeer and laugh.  At length—­it seemed an age to me—­an officer appeared to flog the rabble into order; then she was taken from her horse and led into the house.

Anon the windows of the great fore-room flung bands of yellow torchlight out upon the lawn, and I knew that Tarleton’s court was set again.  At that the pains of hell gat hold upon me and I did pray as I had never prayed before that God would grant me this one boon—­to stand beside her in this time of trial; to give me tongue of eloquence to tell them all that she was innocent; to give me breath to swear she knew not why she went, or what the message was she carried.