“Jump down,” I whisper’d: “we have time, and no more.” Glancing back, I saw a couple of dragoons already coming over the heights. They had spied us.
Dismounting I ran to the cottage door and flung it open. A stream of light, flung back against the sun, blazed into my eyes.
I rubbed them and halted for a moment stock-still.
For Joan stood in front of me, dress’d in the very clothes I had worn on the day we first met—buff-coat, breeches, heavy boots, and all. Her back was toward me, and at the shoulder, where the coat had been cut away from my wound, I saw the rents all darn’d and patch’d with pack thread. In her hand was the mirror I had given her.
At the sound of my step on the threshold she turn’d with a short cry—a cry the like of which I have never heard, so full was it of choking joy. The glass dropp’d to the floor and was shatter’d. In a second her arms were about me, and so she hung on my neck, sobbing and laughing together.
“’Twas true—’twas true! Dear, dear Jack—dear Jack to come to me: hold me tighter, tighter—for my very heart is bursting!”
And behind me a shadow fell on the doorway: and there stood Delia regarding us.
“Good lad—all yesterday I swore to be strong and wait for years, if need be. Fie on womankind, to be so weak! All day I sat an’ sat, an’ did never a mite o’ work—never set hand to a tool: an’ by sunset I gave in an’ went, cursing mysel’, over the moor to Warleggan, to Alsie Pascoe, the wise woman—an’ she taught me a charm—an’ bless her, bless her, Jack, for’t hath brought thee!”
“Joan,” said I, hot with shame, taking her arms gently from my neck: “listen: I come because I am chased. Once more the dragooners are after me—not five minutes away. You must lend me a horse, and at once.”
“Nay,” said a voice in the doorway, “the horse, if lent, is for me!”