I smiled at his fuming ardor, and glancing at the pair of pistols hanging from his saddle-bow, asked if he could shoot.
"Indifferent well."
"Then make him challenge you and choose your own weapon. 'Tis your only hope, and poor enough at that, I fear. I have heard he can clip a guinea at ten paces."
From that we fell silent again, being but a little way from the rendezvous, and so continued until, at a sudden turn in the road, we came in sight of a rude barricade of felled trees barring the way. Jennifer saw it first and pulled up short, loosing his pistols in their cases as he drew rein.
"'Ware the wood!" he said sharply, and none too soon, for even as he spoke the glade at our left filled as by magic with a motley troop deploying into the road as to surround us.
"Now who are these?" I asked; "friends or foes?"
"Foes who will hang you in your own halter strap; Jan Howart's Tories—the same that burned the Westcotts in their cabin a fortnight since. Will your horse take that barricade, think you?"
"Aye,—standing, if need be."
"Then at them, in God's name. Charge!"
It needed but the word and we were in the thick of it. I remembered my old field-marshal's maxim, Von Feinden umringt, ist die Zeit zu zerschmettern; and truly, being so plentifully outnumbered, we did strike both first and hard.