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Updated: June 15, 2025
"Then you will not by so much undo the wrong you have done me, Captain Falconnet?" she said. "A wrong? How then; do you call it a wrong to rescue you from these brutal savages, Mistress Margery?" She took a step nearer, and though the dry-stick blaze was dying down and I could no longer see her face distinctly, I knew well how the scornful eyes were whipping him. "Listen!" she said.
At the first clash of steel the outlying troopers were up and swarming to the rescue; and now on all sides came the trampling rush of the in-closing cordon line. Had Falconnet held his ground a moment longer he would have had us fast in the jaws of the trooper-trap; but 'tis the fatal flaw in mere brute courage that it will break at the pinch.
Had there been but one of us the covert would have been cramped enough; and I was painfully conscious that my borrowed coat of scarlet was but a poor thing to hide in. To make it worse, Falconnet, who had lagged behind at the fire, was now heaping fresh fuel on, and this reviving of the blaze made the place as light as day.
"When you set Tallachama and his braves upon us in the road that night, you were not cautious enough, Captain Falconnet. I saw and heard you. More than that, Tallachama and the others have spoken freely of your plans in their own tongue, not knowing that my poor Jeanne had been three years a captive among the Telliquos."
"This business will not brook unfriendly ears. Are we safe to talk it here, Mr. Stair?" It was Falconnet who answered. "Safe as the clock. You passed my sentry in the road?" "Yes." "He is the padlock of a chain that reaches round the house. Let's have your news, Captain." "As I was saying, the Indians are at one with us.
"I stood within arm's reach of you that night," said I; and from that I hastened swiftly through the story of my trial as a spy and what it came to in the morning, and never mentioned Margery's part in it at all. "You have a bitter enemy in Frank Falconnet," was his comment, when I had made an end of this recounting of my adventures.
Scaling-ladders were planted and hurled down again; stones were cast from the battlements, crushing the enemy; and throughout Berenger's quick eye, alert movements, and great height and strength, made him a most valuable champion, often applauded by a low murmur of commendation from old Falconnet, or a loud shout of 'Ha, well done, the Duke's Englishman, from the gen d'armes for English they would have him to be on the presumptions afforded by his companions, his complexion, and his slow speech.
The pastor and his daughter were placed under the special protection of Captain Falconnet, and the steward had taken care that they should be well lodged in three rooms that had once been the abbot's apartments.
But if Falconnet and his following had ridden neither up nor down the bed of the barrier stream, it seemed equally certain that no horse of the troop had crossed it. The Indian trace, which held straight on up the gorge and presently came out above into a high upland valley, was unmarked by any hoof print, new or old.
We had counted upon a battle royal in any attempt to rescue the women; but that Falconnet, impeded as he was by the slow movements of the powder cargo, could slip away, was a contingency for which we were wholly unprepared.
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