vier himself stepped up on the porch,
laid his hand on Temple's arm, and spoke to him in a low tone. What he
said we didn't hear. The astonishing thing was that neither of them for
the moment paid any attention to the infuriated man beside them. I
saw Nick's expression change. He smiled,--the smile the landlord had
described, the smile that made men and women willing to die for him.
After that Colonel Sevier stooped down and picked up the pistol from
the floor of the porch and handed it with a bow to Tipton, butt first.
Tipton took it, seemingly without knowing why, and at that instant a
negro boy came around the house, leading a horse. Sevier mounted it
without a protest from any one.

"I am ready to go with you, gentlemen," he said.

Colonel Tipton slipped his pistol back into his belt, stepped down from
the porch, and leaped into his saddle, and he and his men rode off into
the stump-lined alley in the forest that was called a road. Nick stood
beside the widow, staring after them until they had disappeared.

"My horse, boy!" he shouted to the gaping negro, who vanished on the
errand.

"What will you do, Mr. Temple?" asked the widow.

"Rescue him, ma'am," cried Nick, beginning to pace up and down. "I'll
ride to Turner's. Cozby and Evans are there, and before night we shall
have made Jonesboro too hot to hold Tipton and his cutthroats."

"La, Mr. Temple," said the widow, with unfeigned admiration, "I never
saw the like of you. But I know John Tipton, and he'll have Colonel
Sevier started for North Carolina before our boys can get to Jonesboro."

"Then we'll follow," says Nick, beginning to pace again. Suddenly, at a
cry from the widow, he stopped and stared at me, a light in his eye like
a point of steel. His hand slipped to his waist.

"A spy," he said, and turned and smiled at the lady, who was watching
him with a kind of fascination; "but damnably cool," he continued,
looking at me. "I wonder if he thinks to outride me on that beast? Look
you, sir," he cried, as Mrs. Brown's negro came back struggling with a
deep-ribbed, high-crested chestnut that was making half circles on
his hind legs, "I'll give you to the edge of the woods, and lay you
a six-forty against a pair of moccasins that you never get back to
Tipton."

"God forbid that I ever do," I answered fervently.

"What," he exclaimed, "and you here with him on this sneak's errand!"

"I am here with him on no errand," said I. "He and his crew came on