While the wagon was being put in position, there was a cessation of firing. We saw the six dragoons from the road climbing on to the wagon, while as many again joined them from the inn. The Colonel said, "Now's our chance!" and fired carefully. One man, who was poised on the rear wheel, fell into the road and hopped round to the back of the wagon holding his right foot in his hand; another, already mounted, sprawled full length on the sacks.

"That's the way," he said, with much satisfaction, and stepped aside to reload. "See if you can improve on it."

By this, under orders from the sergeant, two or three dragoons were creeping under the wagon to fire from behind the wheels. I dropped a man standing at the horses' heads and then, in the nick of time and on second thoughts, made sure of the mare and hit her in the neck. She squealed, kicked, and plunged, and the other horse sharing her fears, they began to drag the wagon off. The sergeant and two or three men leaped at them and managed to quiet them, and then took them out of the traces to save further trouble of the sort. The Colonel, meanwhile, having reloaded, brought down another dragoon with one shot, and ripped open a sack with another. It was barley.

For perhaps a minute the window had been as safe as her corner, and Margaret had been quietly watching the scene. Now, with seven or eight men lying on the top of the sacks, with a stout row of them piled in front as a bulwark, it was time for us to run to cover again. This time, of her own accord, she came my side, and nestled beyond me in the nook between the wall and my body.

The men in the pa.s.sage still made no sign.

"Slids, Oliver," said the Colonel, "I can't see this ugly devil's game yet, but, whatever it is, you came near to spoiling it. Damme, it was a good idea to pepper the horse. Curse me! Where were my fifty years of soldiering that I couldn't think of it?"

"I suppose it comes from my being--"

The sweetest and whitest fingers in the world closed my mouth, and Margaret, thinking that I was on the verge of backsliding, whispered in my ear, "The readiest-witted gentleman in England."

I tingled with the joy of her touch, and turned to her so that I might go on into the coming fight with her last shade of emotion burnt into my memory. A stream of lead poured through the window, but the spluttering of bullets on the walls of the room had no more effect on me than the pattering of hailstones.

"May I finish my sentence, madam?"

"Not as you intended, sir."

"I can't go back on old Bloggs' teaching, madam."

She pouted and frowned, both at once, and the Colonel bawled through the noise of the fusillade, "Being what?"

"Fond of Virgil," roared I back again.

Margaret laughed. Could a nightingale laugh, it would laugh as Margaret laughed then.

Before the music of it died away the sergeant showed his hand, and death at its grizzliest grinned through the window. A great ma.s.s of damp, smouldering straw, lifted on pikels, was thrust into the window-frame, filling it completely, and thick wreaths of dense, foul smoke eddied into the room, while through the straw the rain of bullets poured on, smashing and splintering on walls and ceiling, door and barricade.

The Colonel slashed and poked at the straw with his rapier. Telling Margaret to crouch on the floor, I crawled on my belly and fetched the bed-staff, which stood in its accustomed corner of the chimney-piece. It made a much more serviceable tool for the job, and I flung it across to the Colonel, who seized it and worked it like a blackamoor till he was almost the colour of one, and had, to judge by his voice and demeanour, got almost beyond his German in his rage. Asking for Margaret's handkerchief, I tied it loosely round her mouth, my heart near to bursting as I looked into her calm and patient face. Then I lay down flat and wormed out into the room and, after a hard struggle, wrenched off one of the rods which carried the rings of the bed-curtains. I remember that, as I lay there, writhing and struggling, I counted the bullets, eleven of them, as they spattered about me. However, I got back to Margaret's side untouched, and poked and thrust and slashed to make a hole near her face between straw and window-frame.

Our efforts were practically useless. The straw was cunningly fed from below, and the pall of smoke was now so heavy and dense that the fringe of it was settling down on Margaret's tower of yellow hair, and as I watched the rate at which it was falling, I knew the end was coming. The Colonel had worked with the energy of despair to tear down the vile enemy that was killing us by inches, and now suddenly collapsed and fell like a log to the floor. Margaret would have crawled to him, but I kept her by main force against the wall while I wriggled out of my coat.

"We have one chance left, Margaret," said I. "Your father is only overcome by the smoke--see, there's no sign of a wound about him--and his fall is a G.o.dsend. Give me your other handkerchief and lie down flat, face to the floor and close to the window, and listen for my next instructions."

She did so without a word. I wrapped my coat loosely about her head, and before I could close it in the smoke cloud was settling down on her, even as she lay. I was nearly done for, but she was safe for a few minutes.

Lying full length on the floor, under the window, I tied her handkerchief to the end of the curtain-rod, thrust it through the straw, and waved it about as vigorously as I could.

The sergeant's voice rang out. The firing ceased. The foul ma.s.ses of straw were removed. Then the scoundrel came forward and leered up at me.

"Do your terms hold good?" I shouted.

"Yes," he said.

"Colonel Waynflete and his daughter will be left at liberty to go their way, if I surrender?"

"Yes," he said.

"Then in one minute I'll be with you," said I. Stepping inside the room, I first of all pulled the Colonel to the window, tore loose the clothes round his neck, and laid his head on the window-sill, in the good sweet air. Then crawling to Margaret, I unwrapped the jacket, and said briefly, "Force some of Kate's cordial down your father's throat. Goodbye!"

I returned to the window, clambered out, hung at arm's length, and dropped to the ground. Striding up to the sergeant, I said carelessly, "Your turn this time, sergeant. To-day to thee, to-morrow to me--it's neater in the Latin but you wouldn't understand it--and all Brocton's dragoons shan't save your ugly neck."

"Where the h.e.l.l's your coat?" he demand fiercely.

A cool question, indeed, after trying to suffocate me, but it was never answered. The air was on a sudden filled with the weirdest row I had ever heard. It was as if all the ghosts in Hades had suddenly piped up at their shrillest and ghostliest. This was followed by a splutter of musketry, and this again by loud yells. Looking round I saw a swarm of strange figures sweep into the yard, half women as to their dress, for they wore little petticoats that barely reached their knees, but matchless fighting men as to their behaviour. On they came, with the pace of hounds, the courage of bucks, and the force of the tide.

It was the Highlanders.

The sergeant fled into and through the inn and, with the men from the corridor, got clean away. Not a man else escaped. Half the dragoons on the wagon were picked off like crows on a branch. The rest, and those in or about the yard, got their lives and nothing else barring their breeches, and that not for comeliness' sake but because they were useless. Every man jack of them, in less than five minutes, looked like a half-plucked c.o.c.kerel, and their captors were wrangling like jackdaws about the plunder.

I glanced at the window. To my relief, the Colonel was already sitting up, pumping the sweet air into his befouled lungs, and Margaret smiled joyously and waved her hand to me. I was waving victoriously back to her when my attention was forcibly diverted by two Highlanders, who collared me, intent on reducing me to a state of nature plus my breeches. There was no time to explain, neither would they have understood my explanation. One of them, a son of Anak for height and bulk, already had his hands to my pockets. Him I hit, as hard-won experience had taught me, and he fell all of a heap. His fellow was struck with amazement at seeing such a great beef of a man put out of action so easily, and stood gaping over him for a while. Recovering himself, he s.n.a.t.c.hed a long knife out of his sock and made for me murderously, but I had meantime fished out a guinea and now held it out to him. He took it with the eager curiosity of a child, looked at it wonderingly, made out what it was, and then ran leaping and frisking up and down the yard, holding it high over his head, and shouting, "Ta ginny, ta ginny, ta bonny, gowd ginny!"

I was saved further trouble by the approach of one of the officers, or, to speak with later knowledge, chiefs, of these wild warriors. He informed me in excellent English that he had heard the firing, seen my parleying at the window and my subsequent surrender, and desired to know the meaning of it all.

"The gentleman at the window," I explained, "is Colonel Waynflete, travelling to join Prince Charles. The lady is his daughter, and I am their servant, by name Oliver Wheatman of the Hanyards. These King's men, belonging to my Lord Brocton's regiment of dragoons, attacked us; we refused to surrender, and the rascally sergeant in command smoked us out.

I pray you, sir, to run the wagon up to the window that I may hand them down, since the door is heavily barricaded."

It was done immediately, and he and I ran up to the window together.

"You young dog," said the Colonel. "You surrendered after all."

"In strict accordance, sir, with military usage, I used my discretion as commander of the party."

"Slids!" His grey eyes had the old laugh lurking in them already.

"Commander of the party?"

"There were only Mistress Margaret and I left," said I.

"And the peppermint cordial," put in Margaret.

So in sheer wantonness of joy we sought relief in bantering one another.

Then I introduced the chieftain, who had stood there silent and graceful, a fine figure of a man, finely and naturally posed, and mutual compliments and thanks pa.s.sed between us. Yet in that first minute, with Margaret and the Colonel perched on the sill, and the Highlander and I standing on the sacks of barley, I saw another thing happen, for the big things of life come into it with the swiftness of light and the inevitability of death. A chieftain proudly climbed the wagon; a bond-servant humbly handed Margaret down. As was fair and courteous, and suitable to my real position, I let him do it, and aided the Colonel, who was as yet somewhat shaky. After seeing him safe down, I rushed up again and recovered our weapons and my coat. Down once more, I was getting into my coat when Margaret, who was talking to the Highlander, looked at me and said quietly, "Pray, Master Wheatman, fetch me the domino from my room!"

She said it simply and mistress-like, and of course I shot off to do her bidding. I supposed, as I went, that it was the white snow all around that had brought out the blue in her eyes so vividly.

In the inn I found the host, the lantern still dangling from his finger, notwithstanding his greater woe, and his pleasant, placid wife weeping bitterly. Of the original twenty guineas of the Major's, I now had only four left, and these I thrust into her hand as I pa.s.sed, and told her to be comforted.

From my shooting the dragoon on the roof to my running upstairs for the domino was in all not more than twenty minutes. I skipped over the man who had fallen to my maiden sword. He was lying between the door of the Colonel's room and that of Margaret's, and opposite one of the doors on the other side of the pa.s.sage. Darting into Margaret's room, I recovered the domino.

I was only a moment, but in that moment some one opened the door in the pa.s.sage against which the man lay and so brought him into the light, and I could not help taking a look at him.

My heart stopped with the horror of it; my whole being fell to pieces at the agony of it. I remember running from it as from the gates of h.e.l.l. I remember reeling on the stairs. I remember a headlong fall. I remember no more.

It was Jack.