d to
Pascoe and Malachi to get their guns and hurry to their posts. The youth
at his feet lay in a swoon of terror. He kicked the body savagely and
ran, too, for his gun.

Half a minute later Jane came screaming back through the house.

"Oh, master--they've caught her! They've caught her!"

"Caught whom?"

"Why, Jezebel herself! They've got her in the yard at this moment, and
Master Trevarthen's a-bringing her indoors!"

XIII.

Trevarthen had planned the stroke, and brought it off dashingly.
From the Helleston road that morning he and his troop had turned aside and
galloped across the moors to the outskirts of the village where Mrs.
Stephen lodged. No man dared to oppose them, if any man wished to.
They had dragged her from the house, hoisted her on horseback and headed
for home unpursued. It was all admirably simple as Trevarthen related it,
swelling with honest pride, by the kitchen fire. The woman herself heard
the tale, cowering in a chair beside the hearth, wondering what her death
would be.

Roger Stephen looked at her. "Ah!"--he drew a long breath.

Then Trevarthen went on to tell--for the wonders of the day were not
over--how on their homeward road they had caught up with a messenger from
Truro hurrying towards Steens, with word that the new Sheriff was already
on the march with a regiment drawn off from the barracks at Plymouth, and
had reached Bodmin. In two days' time they might find themselves besieged
again.

Roger listened, but scarcely seemed to hear. His eyes were on the woman
in the chair, and he drew another long breath.

With that a man came crawling through the doorway--or stooping so low that
he seemed to crawl.

It was young Rodda, and he ran to his brother Nathaniel with a sob, and
clasped him about the legs.

"Hullo!" cried Nathaniel. "Why, Hick, lad, what's taken 'ee?"

Said Roger carelessly, "I was going to hang him. But I can afford to
stretch a point now. Carry the cur to the gate and fling him outside."

"Dang it all, Mr. Stephen," spoke up Nat; "you may be master in your own
house, but I reckon Hick and I didn' come here for our own pleasure, and I
see no sport in jokin' a lad till you've scared 'en pretty well out of his
five senses. Why, see here, friends--he's tremblin' like a leaf!"

"He--he meant it!" sobbed Hickory.

"Meant it? Of course I meant it--the dirty, thievin', letter-writer!"
Roger's eyes blazed with madness, and the men by the hearth