The Master of Appleby

w it, as I thought-I screened the candle and stood beside the open window, not to see or hear, but rather from the lack of sight or sound to gathe

t was plain enough that nothing less than a miracle could bring success. Tarleton's Legion was made up of veterans schooled well in border warfare, and though the bivouac seemed but a camp of motionless figures fast manacled in sleep-I could see them strewn lik

e to the bone. For now it came to me that while I would be saving life, mayhap I had been periling it again. There was small doubt that if the messenger were taken with my letter, his life would pay the f

like the forecast. Suddenly, and in silence, out of the ghostly shadows of the trees and into the wan moonlight of the open space beneath my window, with neither shout no

would be loyal to her friend at any cost. Having no messenger she could trust-she knew it well when she h

le yet I looked and choked with rage and grief; and then the bivouac buzzed alive, and men came running, some with arms and some with torches, these last to flash the light

s of hell gat hold upon me and I did pray as I had never prayed before that God would grant me this one boon-to stand beside her in this time of trial; to g

hat agonizing plea was answered. While yet the anguish of it wrung my soul there came a hasty trampling in the corridor, the sentry's challenge

think me broken-spirited because I let them. In any other cause but this I hope I should have fought to

hen I stole a glance at her I was fain to think my coming gave her courage and support. For you must know

id to show themselves too boldly in such a coil, were Gilbert Stair and that smooth parchment-visaged knave, his factor. The while the

e pale. Yet she was more beautiful than I had ever seen her-so beautiful that I would swear the sum of all the precious

forward, the colonel made sho

angling of the lady in your treason," he be

the shortest word were ever the best. "Yet I may say that the lady knew not what she did, nor wh

e guard and so got leave to keep a midnight tryst with you, but not you." An

she did then. One moment she stood a woman tremulous and tearful as any woman caught in desperate deed; the next she

I wish you joy of it. 'Twas I who bribed your

d and shot a gibe

so too high? By God, sir, I think you will come over-late, if ever you

een the plainest way, dumb rage would still have held me tongue-tied. So I could only mop and mow and stammer, and, when the words were found, make shift to blunder o

th the colonel, went the rounds in jeering grins of incredulity. And on

ffed. "Next you will say she k

ew not what the message

nd them full of tearful pleading. "Oh, tell the trut

his hand; and then I understood the flas

we have trapped you fairly and you may as well make a clean breast of it. Your mistress

d set it quivering in the mark. I would not stop to measure it; to look aside at her or any other lest one brief glance apart

this, Colonel Tarleton-that it was done for love? We

ay you? Ho

being so tightly bound;

or is not wholly dead, s