"
"Read it," said I. "It explains itself. Tarleton had laid me by the
heels to wait for the hangman, and I would have passed the word about
the Indian-arming on to you. But my messenger was overhauled, and--"
"Yes, yes," he broke in; "I've spelled it out. But this line added at
the bottom--surely, that is never your crabbed fist. By heaven! 'tis in
Madge's hand!"
He knelt to hold it closer to the flickering firelight, and we
deciphered it together. It was but a line, as he had said, with neither
greeting nor leave-taking, address nor signature.
"If this should come into the hands of any true-hearted gentleman"--here
was a blot as if the pen had slipped from the fingers holding it; and
then, in French, the very wording of the inarticulate cry that had come
to me out of the darkness and silence: "_A moi! pour l'amour de Dieu!_"
We fell apart, each to his own side of the handful of embers.
"You make it out?" said I, after a moment of strained silence.
He nodded. "She has prattled the parlez-vous to me ever since we were
boy and maid together."
A full minute more of the threatening silence, and at the end of it we
were glaring at each other like two wild creatures crouching for the
spring.
It was Jennifer who spoke first. "'Twas meant for me," he said; and his
voice had the warning of a mastiff's growl in it.
"No!" said I, curtly.
"I say it was!"
"Then you say the thing which is not."
Had I been Richard Jennifer, I know not what bitter reproach I should
have found to hurl at the man who had thrice owed his life to me.
Pages:
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172