At length the friendly tavern of Master Willis came into view. When I had reached it, weary and travel-stained, I dismounted, calling for a stable lad to see to the horse. I would but stop, I thought, to get a change of raiment, snatch a hasty bite, and hurry on to greet Lucile.

“Have the dead returned?” quoth Willis, joyfully, as I strode into the big room.

“Nay; ’tis myself in the flesh,” I answered, “as you may know, when I tell you that I am most woefully hungry. Some meat and drink, I pray you, for I must away soon again.”

The tavern keeper bestirred himself to much advantage, and it was not long ere there was plenty on the round table. I drew up a chair, and, while I lingered somewhat over the food, I had time to look about the familiar apartment.

In one corner I noticed a man seated. His legs were stretched out in lazy comfort, one foot crossed over the other, while, with a riding whip in his hand, he switched at his boots. He seemed not to notice me, so that I had a chance to take a good look at him. Then I knew him for 112the same man who had ridden down to the beach, the day the sloops sailed; the mysterious messenger of the night, the man with whom I had nearly come to sword strokes in the Governor’s room. I own I was startled, for I could not help feeling that something portended of no happy omen.

Once he caught me looking at him, but he said nothing until I had finished. Then he rose, lifted his hat from his head, and snapped his whip so that it cracked like a pistol shot.

“Good day to you, Captain Amherst,” he said. “May I have the honor of a few words?”

As he finished he smiled, and, though I could not tell why, I hated him for it.

“As many as you wish,” I answered, “but I am pressed for time now. Will not another occasion do? I----”

“Some other time might serve,” he interrupted, “but I am on the King’s business, and you know that ever presses us men of the sword.”

Not very graciously I led the way to my former apartment, from which I had been absent so long. Wearily I sat down, pointing to another chair, opposite, for my visitor. He took it, doubled the riding whip in his hands, and, with a slight bow to me, said:

“I have been waiting for your return, Captain Amherst,” and he seemed to hesitate over the name. “I have waited ever since you sailed against St. Johns.”

113“Then you had a wearisome delay,” I responded, little heeding my own words, for I was in haste to be away. “One, I fear, not much to your profit or pleasure.”

“I did not look for profit,” was his reply. Then he spoke slowly, and with a mocking, sneering tone. “But it was pleasant enough, tarrying here--with Lucille!”

I sprang to my feet and half drew my sword, for there was more than insult in his words; there was a threat.

“Lucille!” I cried, leaning forward and peering into his handsome, sneering face.

“Aye, Lucille,” he answered coolly, and he never glanced at me, but played with the buckle of his sword belt.

“We had many happy hours together,” he went on; “she and I, while I was waiting for you.”

“Damn you!” I shouted; “what means this! Know you that----”

“Aye, I know,” was his response, and then he looked me full in the face. He seemed to drop his jaunty, careless air, as, at midnight, a dancer casts aside his mask. “I know,” he repeated slowly. “I know you, and I know Lucille.”

My sword was out in an instant, and, with its point, I menaced his heart. But, with a coolness that I could not help admiring, he never moved, nor did he seem at all alarmed.

“Draw, sir!” I cried out. “Draw, in the devil’s name, or I’ll run you through where you stand! The Governor 114is not here now to stay our hands. Who are you, crossing my path so often?”

“There is time enough to draw my sword when I have finished,” he replied, never taking his eyes from my face. “So if you will but put up your weapon, perchance there may be no need to take it from the scabbard again, Sir Francis Dane!”

If he had struck me I could not have been more startled than at the sound of that name. My knees grew weak from very fear, and I sank back into my chair, while my sword which I had held outstretched, clattered to the oak floor.

That my secret had been laid bare, after so many years, when I supposed it safely buried across the sea, shook me as a tempest might a sapling.

“Have I touched you with the point?” asked the stranger, as he cut the air with the little whip.

“Yes! A thousand times, yes!” I cried, and I leaped at him, and would have run him through on the instant with my sword, which I recovered from the floor, had he not nimbly sprang behind the bed.

There he stood, his face working with emotion, his eyes glaring, and his hand clasped so tightly on his sword hilt that his knuckles went white with the strain. I lunged at him again and again, fiercely, blindly, almost, until, in very shame at thrusting at one who had no weapon out, I stopped and stood breathless, like one who had run far.

115“Why do you stand there, silent?” I panted. “Are you a man, or----?”

“Perchance a witch,” he replied, with an air of easy assurance. “I hear there be many hereabouts. Indeed, no later than yesterday three were hanged on the hill yonder.”

I started, in sudden fear, for his words brought back to my mind the witch trial, some months past.

For a space there was silence in the chamber, and I could hear our breaths, as we stood gazing at each other. Then he spoke.

“Well, what is it to be?” he asked. “Peace or war?”

“War!” I cried. “War to the end, now that you know what you do!”

“Very good, then,” was his answer. “But, perchance you will hearken to me for a little. Proclaim an armistice, as it were?”

I nodded, as one in a dream, for I seemed to be asleep, watching all these things transpire, but taking no part in them.

“What would you say,” he went on, “if I told you that I held a warrant from His Most Gracious Majesty, King William, for the apprehension of one Sir Francis Dane, or, as he is known now, Captain Edward Amherst? The charge being high treason.”

“What would I say? Why, that you lied most damnably.”

“Have a care!” he whispered, rather than spoke, and his 116hand fell to his sword hilt with a quick motion. “Have a care! I have suffered much from you. Do not tempt me too far.”

“I am no traitor,” I said proudly, “for I have but now returned from the defense of Pemaquid, which, though it fell was only given up in the face of heavy odds, and because the garrison would not stand by me. I am no traitor. Ask the men who tramped the woods and sailed the sloops with me.”

“Then this must be in error,” was his sudden exclamation. He threw a parchment to me across the bed, behind which he still was, and, while I unrolled it he came out, and sat in the chair again. I recognized the royal arms of England.

“Read,” he said. And then he settled back in his chair most comfortably, as one disposed to listen to some pleasant tale.

I read. True enough it was a warrant for Sir Francis Dane, formerly of the army of “that arch-traitor” Duke Monmouth. All the way through I read the scroll, my heart grow............