"I was ordered to Varick Manor," I said, looking at Sir George. "Otherwise I might have followed Arnold. As it is I cannot stay for the wedding; I must report at Stillwater, leaving by nine o'clock in the morning."
"Lord, Ormond, what a fire-eater you have become!" he said, smiling from his abstraction. "Are you ready to mount Ruyven's nag and come home to a good bed and a glass of something neat?"
"Let Ruyven ride," I said; "I need the walk, Sir George."
"Need the walk!" he exclaimed. "Have you not had walks enough?--and your moccasins and buckskins in rags!"
But I could not endure to ride; a nerve-racking restlessness was on me, a desire for movement, for utter exhaustion, so that I could no longer have even strength to think.
Ruyven, protesting, climbed into his dragoon-saddle; Sir George walked beside him and I with Sir George.
Long, soft August lights lay across the leafy road; the blackberries were in heavy fruit; scarlet thimble-berries, over-ripe, dropped from their pithy cones as we brushed the sprays with our sleeves.
Sir George was saying: "No, we have nothing more to fear from McDonald's gang, but a scout came in, three days since, bringing word of McCraw's outlaws who have appeared in the west--"
He stopped abruptly, listening to a sound that I also heard; the sudden drumming of unshod hoofs on the road behind us.
"What the devil--" he began, then cocked his rifle; I threw up mine; a shrill cock-crow rang out above the noise of tramping horses; a galloping mass of horsemen burst into view behind us, coming like an avalanche.