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We were at that bend in the road where Jan Howart and his Tories had sought to waylay us in the cool gray dawn of a certain June morning when we were galloping this same road to keep my appointment with Sir Francis Falconnet. A huge rock makes a promontory in the stream just here, and I pointed to a water-worn cavity in it where the flood lapped in and out in gurgling eddies.
I said he had a gift to turn a woman's head or touch her heart. I should have said that he could use this gift at will on any one. For the moment I forgot his cool disposal of me in the talk with Captain Stuart; forgot how he had lied to make me out a spy and so had brought me to this pass. So I could only say: "You killed my friend, Frank Falconnet, and " "Tush!" said he.
For all our swift speeding we were yet a little late at the rendezvous under the tall oaks. When we came on the ground the baronet was walking up and down arm in arm with his second, a broad-shouldered young Briton, fair of skin and ruddy of face. If Falconnet had set the Tory trap for us he veiled his disappointment at its failure.
I sensed it all but vaguely at the first, but when a passing horseman slashed me free I came alive, and life and all it meant to me was centered in a single fierce desire. Falconnet had escaped the fusillade; was making swiftly for his horse, safe as yet from any touch of lead or steel. So I might reach and pull him down, I cared no groat what followed after. It was not so to be.
"Sir Francis Falconnet, you are a foul-lipped blackguard!" I said; and, lest that should not be enough, I smote him in the face so that he fell like an ox in the shambles. True to his promise, Richard Jennifer met me in the cool gray birthlight of the new day at a turn in the river road not above a mile or two from the rendezvous, and thence we jogged on together.
"To the devil with their hairsplittings!" said I. "Let us have done with them and be at it." Falconnet was removing his coat, and I stripped mine. The seconds chose the ground where the turf was short and firm, and yet yielding enough to give good footing. We faced each other, my antagonist baring an arm which, despite the bejeweled hand, was to the full as big-muscled as my own.
They have scraped together all the Tory riff-raff this side of the river Falconnet and the others and are holding high revel at Appleby. Since it is still our true-blue borderland, they are scant enough of women of their own kidney, and I saw Madge dancing like any light o' love with every jackanapes that offered."
"Oh, Lord!" groaned Falconnet. "I say, Captain, drown the names in the wine and we'll drink them so. 'Tis by far the easiest way to swallow them."
One proceeds in a contrary direction from the other. Besides, your ancient name, though worthy of all honour, does not inspire the most favourable impression. Malfalconnet! Mal is evil, and falconnet or is it falconnelle? is a cruel, greedy bird of prey. So whoever encounters no evil from you, whoever escapes you unplucked, also enjoys a pleasant surprise.
'twill soon be over now," said I, hearing a groan from my poor Dick. His reply was a chattering curse, not upon Falconnet or the Indians, but upon his malady, the tertian fever. "Now, by all the fiends! I'm chilling again, Jack!" he gasped. "If these cursed wood-wolves mark it, they'll set it down to woman cowardice and that will break my heart!"
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