Whilst we were about this last, Ephraim Yeates came loping down the avenue and through the gate to vault into the saddle of the first horse he could lay hands on; and so it was that we three took the northward road in the silver starlight, with the pursuit now in order again and in full cry behind us.
'Twas not until we had safely run the gantlet of the vedette lines by a by-path known to the old hunter, and had shaken off the troopers that were following, that I found time to ask what had become of the men who had formed the ambush in the shrubbery.
The old man gave me his dry chuckle of a laugh.
"'Twas the same old roose de geer, as the down-country Frenchers 'u'd say. I stole the drunken sergeant's gun and two others, and let 'em off one to a time. As for the screechin', one bazoo's as good as a dozen, if so be ye blow it fierce enough."
"'Twas cut and dried beforehand," Dick explained. "I had an inkling of what was afoot from Ephraim, here, whom I stumbled on when I dropped from the stair window that Madge opened for me. He went to set his one-man ambush whilst I was trying to warn you."
"So," said I. "Our skins are whole, but after all we have come off with never a word to take back to Dan Morgan—unless you have the word."
"Not I," Dick said, ruefully.
The old man chuckled again.
"Ye ain't old enough, neither one o' ye, ez I allow. It takes a right old person to fish out the innards of an inimy's secrets. Colonel Tarleton, hoss, foot and dragoons, with the seventh rigiment and a part o' the seventy-first, will take the big road for Dan Morgan's camp to-morrow at sun-up. And right soon atterwards, Gin'ral Cornwallis 'll foller on. Is that what you youngsters was trying to find out?"