These were plainly deserters or freebooters, acting after their kind, and they had picked up a strange partner during their foray. He wore a yokel's smock much too big for him, and yet not big enough to hide his bespurred riding-boots. On his head he had a dirty tapster's bonnet, and his face was completely hidden by a rudely-cut c.r.a.pe vizard. This singular person was evidently the leader of the gang. He threatened Master Freake with a glittering, long-barrelled pistol, and in gruff, curt tones ordered him to dismount on pain of instant death.

Here was a strange overturn to be sure. Here again fate had rudely upset my plans, and no fat purse would there be for me in this coil. However, though I would have robbed Master Freake willingly enough, my blood being up and he a manifest Hanoverian, I was not going to see Brocton's ruffians rob him, much less kill him. The purse must wait, and when I took it--for take it I must--G.o.d would perchance balance one thing against the other.

All that I had seen and thought took place in a mere fraction of time, and even before Master Freake had pulled up, I was creeping like a ferret from bush to bush to get nearer. Then, just as in his quiet, measured tones he was asking what they wanted, I burst out into the wood, shouting, "Forward, my men, here the villains are!" With the words, I fired my handful of swan-shot clean into the group, and then charged at them yelling, in boyish imitation of a knight of old, "Happy is he that escapeth me."

The two dragoons instantly fled with yelps of pain and terror, and the horse, squealing with fright, began to rear and plunge madly about the road. Black Vizard turned on me, his pistol rang out, and the bullet hissed by my ear. I sprang at him with clubbed gun, and struck hard for his head, but caught him on the neck as he too turned to flee. He went down, spinning and sprawling, in the road, right under the plunging horse.

With a squeal that curdled my blood, she rose in the air, kicking viciously. Her hoofs came down with sickening thuds on the squirming man's skull, cracking it like an egg-sh.e.l.l. His body twitched once or twice, and then settled into the stillness of death.

I seized the horse's rein and soothed her. She let me pat her neck and rub her nose, and soon stood quiet, her neck flecked with foam, her flanks reeking with sweat. Master Freake, who had not spoken a word, dismounted, and I led the mare into the wood and hitched her reins over a bough. Then I returned to the man I had saved, and found him looking calmly down on the man I had killed. The black vizard was now soaking in a horrid pool of blood and brains. I stooped, and with trembling fingers moved it aside and revealed the features of the dead man. It was the pimple-faced Major.

I turned to my intended victim, and found him looking calmly and impa.s.sively at me.

"Master Wheatman of the Hanyards, unless I am mistaken," he said.

"Your servant, sir," said I, rather sourly. But for that dead rascal at our feet I could beyond a doubt have plucked him like a chough, and here I was, still penniless.

"Master Wheatman, I am not a man of many words, but what I say I stand by. I am your very grateful debtor for a very fine and courageous action.

Three to one is long odds, but you won with your brains, sir, as much as by your bravery. Your shout was an excellent device, happily thought on."

He held out his hand. I shook it heartily and then burst out laughing, and laughed on till tears stood in my eyes. And this was the end of my highwaymanship!

"Since the danger is, thanks to you, over, Master Wheatman," he said, "I would e'en like to share your mirth--if I may."

"Sir," I replied, "I am laughing because I have saved you from robbers."

"But why laugh?"

"Because I set out ten minutes ago to rob you myself."

Master Freake gazed casually up and down the hill, and then, fixing his quiet grey eyes on me, said whimsically, "I am a man of peace, and unarmed; the road is of a truth very lonely, and I have considerable sums of money on me."

"Yes, I'm quite vexed. This fire-faced scoundrel has upset my plans finely. I may not get as good a chance for hours."

Now it was his turn to laugh. "Master Wheatman," he said, "you are not the stuff highwaymen are made of. As you are in need of money, you need it for some good purpose, and I shall--"

He stopped short. As we stood, he was facing the wood from which the robbers had burst on him, while I had my back on it. As he stopped, his strong, calm face changed, and his eyes were fixed on something in the wood. Wonder, amazement, delight, awe--not one, but all of these emotions were visible in his face. He looked as one who sees a blessed spirit. I turned. It was Margaret, leaning, pale and spent and breathless, against the trunk of a tree, looking and shuddering at the dread object in the road.

I bounded up to her and touched her on the arm. "All's well, Mistress Waynflete," said I. "I am as yet no gallows-bird."

"But--" Her eyes were still staring wide on the road, and she trembled violently, so I stepped between her and the ghastly sight, and said, "Courage, dear lady. The dead man is your father's worst enemy, Major Tixall, and yon horse killed him, not I."

By this, Master Freake had come nearer to us, and I turned to greet him.

"Madam," said I, "this is my friend, Master Freake, whom I set out to rob." To him I added, "This is Mistress Waynflete, whom I have the honour to serve."

He bared his head and bowed. "And whom I hope to have the honour of serving too."

I looked at him curiously. All other emotions had faded from his face now, but it was clear that her peerless and now so helpless beauty had appealed home to him.

"Sir," she said, recovering herself with a great effort, "I am pleased to make your acquaintance. And now,"--speaking to me,--"since you have given me a great fright and made me behave like a milkmaid rather than a soldier's daughter, perhaps you will tell me what has happened, and how it"--she looked over my shoulder--"comes to be lying there. I heard shots and shrieks that turned me to stone. What has happened?"

"Master Wheatman," said our new acquaintance, taking my words out of my mouth, "is hardly likely to give you a reasonably correct account. Allow me to be the historian of his fine conduct." He told the story with overmuch kindness to me, and as he told it the colour came back to her face, and she was herself again. While he was telling it, I noticed for the first time, or rather for the first time gathered its meaning, that she had run out after me without the domino, and in the biting air she might easily catch a chill. So while Master Freake was making a fine sprose about me, much more applicable to Achilles or the Chevalier Bayard, I slipped off and fetched the hat and coat. He was just concluding his story on my return, and without interrupting him, I clumsily thrust the hat on her head and flung the coat over her shoulders.

"Master Freake," she said, in her sweetest bantering tones, "my servant, as he absurdly calls himself, is really an artist in helping people. I told him this morning that his native shire was his conjurer's hat, when he fetched ham and eggs out of it for poor hungry me. Now he observes that I am coatless and a-cold, and lo, a hat is on my head and a coat on my shoulders. It is marvellous and nothing short of it. Nay, I shall shun him as one in league with the powers of darkness if there's much more of it.

If I be saved, you remember Master Slender,"--this in a sly aside to me,--"I'll be saved by them that have the fear of G.o.d."

"Ingrate!" I cried, half angry and yet wholly delighted; "what of marvel or devilment is there in picking up a hat and coat one has found lying under a tree?"

"Major Tixall's," said Master Freake.

"a.s.s that I am, of course they are. Steady, Mistress Margaret, while I go through the pockets. The odds are we shall find something useful in checkmating my Lord Brocton."

In this I was wrong, for there was not a single sc.r.a.p of writing in any of them. I did, however, fish out two small but heavy packets, wrapped in paper. They were easily examined, and each contained a roll of ten guineas.

"The hire of the two rascals," explained Master Freake.

"Really, Mistress Margaret," said I, "there's something in what you said just now. I do have his nether highness's own luck. I came out for guineas, prepared to rob for them, and here's twenty of the darlings lying ready for me to pick up. Now we can go ahead in comfort."

Through all this talk I was turning over in my mind what account, if any, we were to give Master Freake of our being here. If I had had only myself to consider I should have trusted him without hesitation. He was the sort of man that inspires confidence, his grave, serene, intelligent face having strength and steadfastness written in every line of it. But I had Mistress Waynflete to consider, and if any appeal was to be made for his a.s.sistance, she must make it. I'm afraid that I hoped she wouldn't, since I was jealous of any interference in my temporary responsibility for her welfare.

"Master Freake," I said, "some account will, I suppose, have to be given of yon ruffian's death. The two runaways are scarcely likely to appear as witnesses, so, for Mistress Waynflete's sake, I must ask you, should an explanation become necessary, to conceal my share in the matter."

"The manner of his death is fortunately quite obvious, and if it were not, any account I choose to give of it will pa.s.s unquestioned."

"Then it will be easy for you, I hope, to forget me when giving it. And now, madam, I think we must be moving."

"Before you go," said Master Freake, "let me say again that if I can help you, you have only to ask. You, Master Wheatman, because your twofold signal service is something it would shame me for ever not to be allowed to return, and you, madam, because," he paused, and the curious rapt expression came over his face again, "because you are very beautiful and need help. Your father's politics will make no difficulty, so far as I am concerned."

"You know my father?" she asked, surprised.

"Know of him. My Lord Brocton was boasting last night of his capture--and of other things," he lamely concluded.

"Is he boasting this morning?" I asked.

"I have not seen him," he said, "but Mistress Dobson told me she thought he'd been rooks'-nesting and had fallen off the poplar."

"I met him again," said I, "and did not like his conversation."

"Master Wheatman means," explained Mistress Waynflete, "that he saved me from my Lord Brocton's clutches at the imminent risk of his own life." She stretched out her hands and touched the holes in my coat with her white, slender fingers. "My lord's rapier made these," she said.

"An inch to the left, my friend," quoth Master Freake, "and you'd have been as dead as mutton. His lordship, it seems, is busily piling up a big account with both of us. Well, in my own way, I'll make the rascal pay as dearly as you have in yours. If you will be pleased to accept my help, madam, I will do all I can for you. There are, fortunately, other means than carnal weapons of influencing such persons as Lord Brocton."

"Like Master Wheatman, sir, you are too good to a poor girl." She said it gratefully and humbly, and indeed so she felt, but no man could listen to her meek words without pride.

"I'm glad I turned footpad, in spite of you," said I to my dear mistress.

"I can never thank you enough," was the simple reply. "It was wicked in me to accept the sacrifice, but in G.o.d's good providence it was not made in vain."

"Then I come into the firm," said Master Freake smilingly, and when, catching the meaning of his metaphor, she smiled brightly back at him, and held out her hand, he bowed over it formally, but very kindly, and kissed it. She blushed prettily, and then, after a moment's hesitation, stretching it out to me, said, "But I must not forget the original partner." I took the splendid prize in my rough, red, farmer's hand, and kissed it reverently. The touch of my lips on her sweet, smooth flesh made me tremble, and I knew the madness was creeping over me, but I gritted my teeth, and our eyes met again. The blush had gone, but not the smile. It was not now, however, the smile of a frank maiden but of an inscrutable and dominating woman. I knew the difference, for instinct is more than experience, and I chilled into the yokel again and wondered.