It could have been but little short of midnight when we came down into the Great Trace near the ambush¹ ground where we had set our trap for the peace men.  
The night had cleared most beautifully, and overhead the stars were burning like points of white fire in the black dome² of the heavens. As often happens after a shower, the night shrillings of the forest were in fullest tide; and a whip-will's-widow, disturbed by our approach, fluttered to a higher perch⁴ and set up his plaintive⁵ protest.
 
At our turning eastward⁶ on the trace, the old hunter massed our little company as compactly as the path allowed, and giving us the word to follow cautiously, tossed his bridle⁷ rein⁸ to the Catawba and went on ahead to feel out the way.
 
This rearrangement set me to ride abreast⁹ with Margery; and for the first time since that fateful night in the upper room at Appleby Hundred we were together and measurably alone.
 
Since death might be lying in wait for us at any turn in the winding¹⁰ bridle-path, I had no mind to break the strained silence. But, womanlike, she would not miss the chance to thrust at me.
 
"Are you not afire with shame, Captain Ireton?" she said, bitterly; and then: "How you must despise me!"
 
I knew not what she meant; but being most anxious for her safety, I begged her not to talk, putting it all upon the risk we ran in passing the outlet¹¹ of the sunken valley. Now, as you have long since learned, my tongue was but a skilless servant; and though I sought to make the command the gentlest plea, she took instant umbrage¹² and struck back smartly.
 
"You need not make the danger an excuse. I will be still; and when I speak to you again, you will be willing enough to hear me, I promise you!"
 
"Nay¹³, then, dear lady; you must not take it so!" I protested. "'Tis my misfortune to be ever blundering."
 
But to this she gave me no answer at all; and barring a word or two of heartening for her serving woman, she never opened her lips again throughout the passage perilous¹⁴.
 
By good hap³ we came to the crossing of the cavern¹⁵ stream without meeting any foeman; and on the farther side of the shallow ford¹⁶ we found the old borderer awaiting us.
 
"Ez I allow, we've smelt¹⁷ the bait in the trap and come off with whole bones, like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego," he said, mixing metaphor¹⁸, Scripture¹⁹ phrase and frontier idiom as was his wont²⁰. Then he put a leg over his horse and gave the stirrup-word: "From now on, old Jehu, the son o' Nimshi, is the hoss-whipper we've got to beat. Get ye behind, Cap'n John, and give the hoss that lags a half inch 'r so of your sword-p'int."
 
Then and there began a night flight long to be remembered. Down the valley of the swift river to the ford where Yeates and I had crossed after the mock rescue of Margery the night before, we let the horses pick the way as they could. But once beyond the ford, where the trace was wider and the footing less precarious²¹, we plied²² whip and spur, pushing the saddle-beasts for every stride we could get out of them in the blind race.
 
I have marveled often that we came not once to grief in all this long night-gallop through the darkness. There was every chance for it. The over-arching trees of the great forest shut out all the starlight, and the trace was no more than a bridle-path, rougher than any cart road. Yet we held the breakneck pace steadily²⁴, save for the time it took to thread some steep defile²⁵ to a stream crossing, or to scramble²⁶ up its fellow on the opposite side; and when the dawn began to gray in the sky ahead, we were well out of the broken mountain region and into the opener forest of the hill country.
 
The sun was yet below the eastern horizon when we came to the fording of a larger stream than any we had crossed in the night. Its course was toward the sunrise, hence I took it for some tributary²⁷ of the Catawba or the Broad.
 
"'Tis the Broad itself," said Ephraim Yeates, in answer to my asking; "and yit it ain't; leastwise, it ain't the one you know. 'Tis the one the Parley-voos claimed in the old war, and they call it the Frinch Broad."
 
"But that flows north and westward²⁸, if I remember aright," said I.
 
"So it do, so it do—in gineral. But hereabouts 'twill run all ways for Sunday, by spells."
 
"If this be the French Broad we are not yet out of the Tuckasege country, as I take it."
 
"Mighty²⁹ nigh to it; nigh enough to make camp for a resting spell. I reckon ye're a-needing that same pretty toler'ble bad, ain't ye, little gal²³?" this last to Margery.
 
Weary as she was she smiled upon him brightly, as though he had been her grandsire and so free to name her how he pleased.
 
"I shall sleep well when we are out of danger. But you must not stop for me, or for Jeanne, till 'tis safe to do so."
 
"Safe? Lord love ye, child! 'safe' is a word beyond us yit, and will be till we sot ye down on your daddy's door-stone. But we'll make out to give ye a bite and sup and forty winks³⁰ o' sleep immejitly, if not sooner, now."
 
So, on the farther side of the stream the hunter led the way aside, and when we were come to a small meadow glade³¹ with good grazing for the horses, he called a halt, lifted the women from their saddles and came to help me ease Dick down. The poor lad was stiff and sore, having no more use of his joints³² than if he were a bandaged mummy; but the fever delirium³³ had passed and he was able to laugh feebly at the tree-limb contrivance rigged to hold him in the saddle.
 
"How did we come out of it, Jack³⁴?" he asked, when we had let him feel the comfort of lying flat upon his back on the soft sward.
 
"As you see. We are all here, and all in fair fettle, saving yourself. You're the heaviest loser."
 
He smiled, and his eyes languid with the fever sought out Margery, who would not come anigh whilst I was with him.
 
"That remains³⁵ to be seen, Jack. If my dream comes true, I shall be the richest gainer."
 
"What did you dream?"
 
He beckoned³⁶ me to bend lower over him. "I dreamed I was sore hurt, and that she was binding³⁷ up my bruises³⁸ and crying over me."
 
"'Twas no dream," I said; and with that I went to help Yeates make a bough³⁹ shelter for the women while Uncanoola was grinding the maize⁴⁰ for the breakfast cakes.
 
'Tis not my purpose to weary you with a day-by-day accounting⁴¹ for all that befell us on the way back to Mecklenburg. Suffice it to say that we ate and slept and rose to mount and ride again; this for five days and nights, during which Jennifer's fever grew upon him steadily.
 
At the close of the fifth day our night halt was in a deserted⁴² log cabin at the edge of an unfinished clearing in the heart of the forest. Here Richard's sickness anchored us, and for three full weeks the journey paused.
 
We nursed the lad as best we could for a fortnight, dosing him with stewings of such roots and herbs as the Catawba could find in the wood. Then, when we were at our wits' ends, and Yeates and I were casting about how we could compass the bringing of a doctor from the settlements, the fever took a turn for the better,—of its own accord, or for Uncanoola's physickings, we knew not which,—and at the end of the third week Dick was up and able to ride again, this time without the forked stick to hold him in the saddle.
 
After this we went on without mishap⁴³, and with no hardship greater than that of living solely⁴⁴ upon the meat victual provided by the hunter's rifle; and you who know this plough-dressed region at this later day will wonder when I write it down that in all that long faring, or rather to the last day's stage of it, we saw never a face of any of our kind, or of the Catawba's.
 
You may be sure the month or more we spent thus in the heart of the wildwood was but a sorry time for me. While the excitement of the pursuit and rescue lasted, and later, when anxiety for Richard filled the hours of the long days and nights, I was held a little back from slipping into that pit of despair which I had digged for myself.
 
But when the strain was off and Dick was up and fit again, the misery⁴⁵ of it all came back with added goadings. I had never dreamed how cutting sharp 'twould be to see these two together day by day; to see her loving, tender care of him, and to hear him babble⁴⁶ of his love for her in his feverish⁴⁷ vaporings. Yet all this I must endure, and with it a thing even harder. For, to make it worse, if worse could be, the shadow of complete estrangement⁴⁸ had fallen between Margery and me. True to her word, given in that moment when I had besought⁴⁹ her not to speak aloud for her own safety's sake, she had never opened her lips to me; and for aught she said or did I might have been a deaf-mute slave beneath her notice.
 
And as she drew away from me, she seemed to draw the closer to Richard Jennifer, nursing him alive when he was at his worst, and giving him all the womanly care and sympathy a sick man longs for. And later, when he was fit to ride again, she had him always at her side in the onward⁵⁰ faring.
 
As I have said before, this was all as I would have it. Yet it made me sick in my soul's soul; and at times I must needs fall behind to rave⁵¹ it out in solitude⁵², cursing the day that I was born, and that other more misfortunate day when I had reared the barrier impassable between these two.
 
What wonder, then, that, as we neared the fighting field of the great war, I grew more set upon seizing the first chance that might offer an honorable escape from all these heartburnings? 'Twas a weakness, if you choose; I set down here naught⁵³ but the simple fact, which had by now gone as far beyond excusings as the underlying⁵⁴ cause of it was beyond forgiveness.
 
'Twas on the final day, the day when we were riding tantivy to reach Queensborough ............