"
"Not once?"
"No, not once. Three times you have done what the lovingest wife could
do to save a husband's life; and I do greatly suspect there was a fourth
and earlier time. Tell me, little one; was it not you who sent the
Indian to Captain Forney to tell him a patriot spy was to be executed at
day-dawn in the oak glade?"
She would not answer me direct.
"'Twas I who brought you to that pass," she said, speaking soft and low.
"But for my riding down upon you one other morning in that same oak
glade, you would not have had Sir Francis Falconnet's sword in your
shoulder. And but for that sword wound, nothing that followed would have
followed."
Saying this she fell silent for a space, and when she spoke again she
was become by some subtle transmutation my trusting little maid of the
by-gone halcyon-time.
"Do you remember how you used to make a comrade of me in the old days,
Monsieur John, telling me things my elder brother might have told me,
had I had one?"
I said I remembered; that I was not likely to forget.
"Are you strong enough to stand in that elder brother's place again
to-night?"
"Try me and see, dear lady."
"Not whilst you say 'dear lady,'" she pouted. "'Twas 'Margery' and
'Monsieur John' a year agone."
"Have it as you will; I will even call you 'Madge' if it pleases you
better."
"No," she said; "that is Dick's name for me; and--and it is of Dick that
I would speak. You love him well, do you not, Monsieur John?"
I said I could never make her, or any woman, fully understand the bond
there was between us.
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