"Up the stair, quickly, pour l'amour de Dieu!" she whispered; and we were at the clock landing when the great door opened and some half-dozen king's officers came in. We crouched together behind the balustrade till they should pass beyond the sight of us, and in the group I marked a man stout and heavy built, walking full solidly for his two-and-forty years. He wore his own hair dressed high in front in the fashion first set for the women by the Grand Monarque's loose-wife; and as he passed under the candles I saw that it was graying slightly. His face, high-browed, long-nosed, double-chinned, with the eyes womanish for bigness and marked with brows that might have been penciled by the hair-dresser, I had seen before; but lacking this present sight of it, the orders on his breast would have named him the ranking general of the army in the field—Lord Charles Cornwallis. With all the houses in the town to choose among, I had blundered into this—my Lord's own headquarters.
I had but a passing glimpse of the incoming group, for when it was well beneath the turn of the stair, my lady had me up and running again, driving me on before her to the chamber floor above, along a dimly lighted corridor with many turnings, and so to a cul-de-sac in the same—a doorless passage with a high dormer window in the end and no other apparent means of egress.
Margery had snatched a candle from one of the corridor holders in the flight, and now she bade me sit on the floor and draw my boots. I did it, shamefacedly enough, being but a foul and ragged vagabond unfit to have her come anigh me. But I might have spared my blushings for she had turned her back and was opening a secret door in the high wainscot.
Beyond the door lay a raftered garret half filled with cast-off house lumber and lighted and aired by two high roof windows. Into this she led me, with a finger on her lip for silence. A hum of voices, the clinking of glass, and now and again a hearty soldier laugh told me that my garret was above some living-room of the house.
While I stood, boots in hand, she found a makeshift candlestick and in a trice had spread me a pallet on an ancient oaken settle big enough to serve for a choir stall in a cathedral.
"You'll be safe here for the night, if so be you will make no more noise than a rat might make," she whispered. "Mais, mon Dieu! 'tis a terrible risk. How you will get off in the morning I do not know."
"Leave that to me," I rejoined. Then I remembered the portmanteau and the promise that it should be sent hither. Here was a further complication, and I must needs beg a boon of her. "A black boy will bring my portmanteau in the morning. I have a decent desire to be hanged in clean clothing; may I beg you to—"
She made a quick little gesture of impatience; at the further complication, or at my boldness in asking, I knew not which. But her whispered reply was of assent, and then she turned to leave me.
At that a sudden fierce desire to know why she had thus befriended me came to throttle prudence.
"One more word before you go, Mistress Margery. Will you tell me why you have done this for the man who can serve you only by thrusting his neck into the hangman's noose?"