He rose, muttering, half as to himself:  “I thought I’d never be so far out of reckoning.”  Then to me:  “A few hours since, the Cherokees were encamped just here.  You are standing in the ashes of their fire.”

“So?” said I.  “Then they have gone?”

“Gone from this safely enough, to be sure.  They have been gone some hours; the cinders are cold and dew wet.”

“So much the better,” I would say, thinking only that now there would be the fewer enemies to fight.

He clipt my arm suddenly, putting the value of an oath into his gripping of it.

“Come awake, man; this is no time to be a-daze!” His whisper was a sharp behest, with a shake of the gripped arm for emphasis.  “If the Indians are gone, it means that the powder train has come and gone, too.”

“Well?” said I.

I was still thinking, with less than a clod’s wit, that this would send the baronet captain about his master’s business, and so Margery would have surcease of him for a time, at least.  But Jennifer fetched me awake with another whip-lash word or two.

“Jack! has the night’s work gone to your head?  If Falconnet has got his marching orders you may be sure he’s tried by hook or crook to play ‘safe bind, safe find,’ with Madge.  By heaven! ’twas that she was afeard of, and we are here too late!  Come on!”

With that he faced about and ran; and forgetting to loose his grip on my arm, took me with him till I broke away to have my sword hand free.  So running, we came presently to the open space before the house, and, truly, it was well for us that the place was clean deserted; for by this we had both forgot the very name of prudence.

Jennifer outran me to the door by half a length, and fell to hammering fiercely on the panel with the pommel of his broadsword.

“Open!  Mr. Stair; open!” he shouted, between the batterings; but it was five full minutes before the fan-light overhead began to show some faint glimmerings of a candle coming from the rooms beyond.

Richard rested at that, and in the pause a thin voice shrilled from within.

“Be off, you runagates!  Off, I say! or I fire upon ye through the door!”

Giving no heed to the threat, Dick set up his clamor again, calling out his name, and bidding the old man open to a friend.  In some notching of the hubbub I heard the unmistakable click of a gun-flint on steel.  There was barely time to trip my reckless batterer and to fall flat with him on the door-stone when a gun went off within, and a handful of slugs, breaching the oaken panel at the height of a man’s middle, went screeching over us.

Before I knew what he would be at, Richard was up with an oath, backing off to hurl himself, shoulder on, against the door.  It gave with a splintering crash, letting him in headlong.  I followed less hastily.  It was as black as a setter’s mouth within, the gun fire having snuffed the old man’s candle out.  But we had flint and steel and tinder-box, and when the punk was alight, Jennifer found the candle under foot and gave it me.  It took fire with a fizzing like a rocket fuse, and was well blackened with gunpowder.  When the flint had failed to bring the firing spark, the old man had set his piece off with the candle flame.