is tune.

"They tell me you were in the service once and left it honorably. I am
loath to hang a man who has worn the colors. Would it please you best to
die a soldier's death, Captain Ireton?"

I said it would, most surely.

He said I should have the boon if I would tell him what an officer on
the Baron de Kalb's staff should know: the strength of the Continentals,
the general's designs and dispositions, and I know not what besides. I
think it was my laugh that made him stop short and damn me roundly in
the midst.

"By God, I'll make you laugh another tune!" he swore. "You rebels are
all of a piece, and clemency is wasted on you!"

"Your mercy comes too dear; you set too high a price upon it, Colonel
Tarleton. If, for the mere swapping of a rope for a bullet, I could be
the poor caitiff your offer implies, hanging would be too good for me."

"If that is your last word--But stay; I'll give you an hour to think it
over."

"It needs not an hour nor a minute," I replied. "If I knew aught about
the Continental army--which I do not--I'd see you hanged in your own
stirrup-leather before I'd tell you, Colonel Tarleton. Moreover, I
marvel greatly--"

"At what?" he cut in rudely.

"At your informant's lack of invention. He might have brought me
straight from General Washington's headquarters while he was about it.
'Twould be no greater lie than that he told you."

He heard me through, then fell to cursing me afresh, and would be
sending an aide-de-camp hot-foot for Falconnet.

While the messenger was going and coming there was a chance for me to
look around like a poor trapped animal in a pitfall, loath to die
without a struggle, yet seeing not how any less inglorious end should
offer. The eye-search went for little of encouragement; there was no
chance either to fight or fly. But apart from this, the probing of the
shadows revealed a thing that set me suddenly in a fever, first of rage,
and then of apprehension.

As I have said, this gathering-room of our old house was in size like an
ancient banquet hall. It had a gable to itself in breadth and height,
and at the farther end there was a flight of some few steps to reach the
older portion of the house beyond. The upper end of this low stair
pierced the thick wall of the older house, and in the shadows of the
niche thus formed I saw my lady Margery.

She was standing as one who looks and listens; and my rage-fit blazed
out upon the descrying of a shadowy figure