ere is of leaving it?"

But Ralph was too much afflicted by the wretched condition of Edith, whom
his gratitude for the life she had bestowed had made the mistress
paramount of his soul, to give much heed to any one but herself; and it
was only by dint of hard questioning that Roland drew from him, little by
little, an account of the causes which had kept him in the vicinity of
the travellers, and finally brought him to the scene of combat.

It had been, it appeared, an eventful and unlucky day with the
horse-thief, as well as the soldier. Aside from his adventure on the
beech-tree, enough in all truth to mark the day for him with a black
stone, he had been peculiarly unfortunate with the horses to which he had
so unceremoniously helped himself. The gallant Briareus, after sundry
trials of strength with his new master, had at last succeeded in throwing
him from his back; and the two-year-old pony, after obeying him the whole
day with the docility of a dog, even when the halter was round his neck,
and carrying him in safety until within a few miles of Jackson's Station,
had attempted the same exploit, and succeeded, galloping off on the back
track towards his home. This second loss was the more intolerable, since
Stackpole, having endured the penalty for stealing him, considered
himself as having a legal, Lynch-like right to the animal, which no one
could now dispute. He therefore returned in pursuit of the pony, until
night arrested his footsteps on the banks of the river, which, the waters
still rising, he did not care to cross in the dark. He had, therefore,
built a fire by the road-side, intending to camp-out till morning.

"And it was your fire, then, that checked us?" cried Roland, at this part
of the story,--"it was _your_ light we took for the watch-fire of
Indians?"

"Injuns you may say," quoth Stackpole, innocently, "for thar war a knot
of 'em I seed sneaking over the ford; and jist as I was squinting a long
aim at 'em, hoping I might smash two of 'em at alick, slam-bang goes a
feller that had got behind me, 'tarnal death to him, and roused me out of
my snuggery. Well, sodger, then I jumps into the cane, and next into the
timber; for I reckoned all Injun creation war atter me. And so I sticks
fast in a lick; and then to sumtotalise, I wallops down a rock, eend
foremost, like a bull-toad: and, 'tarnal death to me, while I war
scratching my head, and wondering whar I came from, I heerd the crack of
the guns ac