The Master of Appleby

le from Episcopal Virginia, and a descendant of those Nottingham Iretons whose best-known son fought stoutly against Church and King un

after a stormy passage and overmuch waiting as my cousins' guest in Lincolnshire, ha

er. But of this you may like to know that, what with a good father's example, and some small heritage of Puritan decency come down to me from the sound-hea

et. Coverdale was an ensign in my own regiment, and we were sworn friends from the first. His was a clean soul

cy; but with a mother's bequeathings to purchase idleness and to gild his iniquities, he was a fair example of the jeunesse dorée of that England; a libertine, a gamester, a ra

gic comedy of a false friend's treachery and a woman's weakness; a duel, and the wrong man slain. And you may know this; that Falconnet's

for the upsetting news of the Tryon tyranny in Carolina,-news which reached me on the

he feudal lord of his own domain, more absolute than many of the petty kinglings I came afterward to know in the German marches. But this, too, I remember; that while his rule at Appleby Hundred was stern and despotic enough,

rth receiving, my father had little justice and less mercy accorded him. With many others he was outlawed; his estates were declared for

lainies as these of the butcher William Tryon. So I threw up my lieutenant's commission in the Blues, took ship for the Continent, and, after wearing s

that elder time must needs seem past belief. It was early in the year '79 before I began to hear more than vague camp-fire tales of the struggle goin

an warfare. Though I came not once upon the partizans themselves in all that long faring, there were trampled fields and pillaged h

when I rode into Queensborough was the familiar trappings of my old service, and I was made to know that in spite of Mr. Jefferson's boldly written Declaration of Independence, and t

was chiefly concerned with my own affair and anxious to learn at fir

the outlawed Roger Ireton save that of this poor hunting lodge in the mighty forest of the Catawba, overlooked, with the few runaw

Nor shall I forget his truculent leer when he hinted that I had best be gone out of these parts,

ve throttled him where he sat at his writing table, matching his long fingers and smirking at me with his evil

e day I would be minded to go back to my old field-marshal and the keeping of the Turkish border; the next I would ride over some part of my stolen heritage and swear a great oath to bide ti

bin, so lightly touched by time that the mere sight of it carried me swiftly back to those happy days when my father and I had stalked the white-tailed deer in the hill glades beyond, wi

red, and a very grandsire of ancients now-was one of the runaways who made the forest lodge a refuge. He

n there was instant vassalage and loyal service. But best of all, on my first evening before the handful of fire in the great fire-place, Darius brought me a package swathed in many wrappings of Indian-tanned de

S

cast for liberty and it has failed, and to-morrow I and five others are to die at the rope's end. I bequeath you my sword-'tis all the tyrant hath

fa

r Ir

r, when my voice was surer and my eyes less dim, I summoned Darius and bade him tell m

, how best to throw the weight of the good old Andrea into the patriot scale, meaning

that this light-horse outpost in our hamlet was far in advance of the army of invasion-so far that it was dangersomely isolated, an

l down upon the Wateree, I could not guess. But for the secrecy and vigilance there were good reasons and sufficient. Th

ees. She was riding, unmasked, down the high road, not on a pillion as most women rode in that day, but upon her own mount with a black groom two lengths in the rear. I can picture her for you no better th

lf laughing, half defiant. I turned quickly to look at the favored one. He stood with his back to me; a man of about my own bigness, heavy-built and well-muscled. He wore a

he turned, and then I saw his face-saw and recognized it though nine years l

bait him, the lady passed out of earshot, and I heard him say to the two, his comrades, that foul thi

cried the younger of the twain; and the

" I said; and, lest that should not be enough, I smote hi