ever seen her--so beautiful that I would swear
the sum of all the precious gifts in God's great universe might be
expressed for me in this; that I might die to save her from this shame
and agony.

When my guards had thrust me forward, the colonel made short work of our
fresh offense.

"'Twas a dastard's trick, my Captain--this tangling of the lady in your
treason," he began. "How did you get your speech with her?"

"That is none of your affair, Colonel Tarleton," I retorted boldly,
thinking that with such a man the shortest word were ever the best. "Yet
I may say that the lady knew not what she did, nor why. As for my
getting speech with her, she was not any way to blame. I tampered with
your sentry."

"By God, you lie!" was his comment on this. "She might have tampered
with the guard and so got leave to keep a midnight tryst with you, but
not you." And then to my poor frighted love: "Have you no shame,
Mistress Margery Stair?"

Now I have said that she was changeful as any child or April sky, but
never had I seen her pass from mood to mood as she did then. One moment
she stood a woman tremulous and tearful as any woman caught in desperate
deed; the next she became a goddess vilified, and if her look had been a
dagger I think her flashing eyes had killed him where he stood.

"You've found a way to make me speak, sir, and I wish you joy of it.
'Twas I who bribed your sentry, and I did go to Captain Ireton's room."

The colonel laughed and shot a gibe sharp at my enemy.

"How is this, Sir Francis. Did I not tell you you had thrust an inch or
so too high? By God, sir, I think you will come over-late, if ever you
do come at all. This captain-emeritus hath forestalled you beautifully."

As more than once before in this eventful night, the air went flaming
red before my eyes and helpless wrath came uppermost. I saw no way to
clear her, and had there been 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 out that such an
accusation did the lady grievous wrong; that she had come attended and
at my beseeching, to take a message from a dying man to one who was his
friend.

For my pains I had a brutal laugh in payment; a laugh that, starting
with the colonel, went the rounds in jeering grins of incredulity. And
on the heels of it the colonel swore afresh, cursing me for a clumsy
liar.

"A likely story, that