"Do you count on making such a venture?" Evan asked in surprise.
"Some one must do it, and since I cannot set you free, I must act as messenger."
"But there is hardly one chance in a hundred you will succeed."
"Yet I shall try to take advantage of that hundredth chance."
"But how may you get there? It is twenty miles over a rough mountain road."
"Even though it were ten times as far, and the peril greater an hundredfold, do you not think I would brave it in the hope of saving the lives of those brave men?"
Evan ceased to find objections to her plan; but asked how she might be able to make the journey.
"There is in the stable a colt which the Britishers will hardly attempt to drive away because he has not yet been broken. I shall do my best at riding him, and trust in the good God for protection."
Nathan was not a cowardly lad; his acquaintances spoke of him as one having much courage, and yet he trembled at the thought of this woman attempting to bridle an unbroken colt, and then ride him twenty miles over the rough mountain roads where only the steadiest of horses might safely be used.
He would have said something in the hope of dissuading her from her purpose; but it was as if his tongue refused its office, for Sarah Dillard would ride that night not only to save a hundred or more friends of freedom, but to save the life of her husband.