"'Tis the Catawba's arrow," said Jennifer, though how he knew I could not guess; and then he cut the threads to free the scroll.
Unrolled and spread at large, the parchment proved to be that map of Captain Stuart's that I had found and lost again. And on the margin of it was my note to Jennifer, written in that trying moment when the bribed sentry waited at the door and my sweet lady stood trembling beside me, murmuring her "Holy Marys."
"Read it," said I. "It explains itself. Tarleton had laid me by the heels to wait for the hangman, and I would have passed the word about the Indian-arming on to you. But my messenger was overhauled, and—"
"Yes, yes," he broke in; "I've spelled it out. But this line added at the bottom—surely, that is never your crabbed fist. By heaven! 'tis in Madge's hand!"
He knelt to hold it closer to the flickering firelight, and we deciphered it together. It was but a line, as he had said, with neither greeting nor leave-taking, address nor signature.
"If this should come into the hands of any true-hearted gentleman"—here was a blot as if the pen had slipped from the fingers holding it; and then, in French, the very wording of the inarticulate cry that had come to me out of the darkness and silence: "A moi! pour l'amour de Dieu!"
We fell apart, each to his own side of the handful of embers.
"You make it out?" said I, after a moment of strained silence.
He nodded. "She has prattled the parlez-vous to me ever since we were boy and maid together."
A full minute more of the threatening silence, and at the end of it we were glaring at each other like two wild creatures crouching for the spring.