back--fall-edge! If there's any hacking of
necks, mine is thicker than yours! I'll run the risks. Do you wait
here in shadow."

And he darted away. The gate creaked as it gave.

Then I waited for what seemed eternity.

A night-watchman shuffled along with swinging lantern, calling out:
"What ho? What ho?" Townsfolks rode through the streets with a
clatter of the chairmen's feet; but no words were bandied by the
fellows, for a Sabbath hush lay over the night. A great hackney-coach
nigh mired in mud as it lumbered through mid-road. And M. Picot's
hound came sniffing hungrily to me.

A glare of light shot aslant the dark. Softly the door of Rebecca's
house opened. A frail figure was silhouetted against the light. The
wick above snuffed out. The figure drew in without a single look,
leaving the door ajar. But an hour ago, the iron righteousness of
bigots had filled my soul with revolt. Now the sight of that little
Puritan maid brought prayers to my lips and a Te Deum to my soul.

The prison gate swung open again with rusty protest. Two hooded
figures slipped through the dark. Jack Battle had locked the gate and
the keys were in my hand.

"Take them back," he gurgled out with school-lad glee. "'Twill be a
pretty to-do of witchcraft to-morrow when they find a cell empty. Go
hire passage to England in Captain Gillam's boat!"

"Captain Gillam's boat?"

"Yes, or Master Ben's pirate-ship of the north, if she's there," and he
had dashed off in the dark.

When Rebecca appeared above the cellar-way with a flagon that reamed to
a beaded top, the keys were back on the wall.

"I was overlong," panted Rebecca, with eyes averted as of old to the
folds of her white stomacher. "'Twas a stubborn bung and hard to draw."

"Dear little cheat! God bless you!--and bless you!--and bless you,
Rebecca!" I cried.

At which the poor child took fright.

"It--it--it was not all a lie, Ramsay," she stammered. "The bung was
hard--and--and--and I didn't hasten----"

"Dear comrade--good-bye, forever!" I called from the dark-of the step.

"Forever?" asked the faint voice of a forlorn figure black in the
doorway.

Dear, snowy, self-sacrificing spirit--'tis my clearest memory of her
with the thin, grieved voice coming through the dark.

I ran to the wharf hard as ever heels nerved by fear and joy and
triumph and love could carry me. The passage I easily engaged from the
ship's mate, who dinned into my unlistening ea