Not a word was spoken as he lifted her to the ground, and when they turned to walk back to her companions, it was the tall Loyalist who led her horse. She listened as in a daze to the talk going on around her, answering briefly the questions of the solicitous group. But the presence behind her was the one she felt, and yet she dared not look backward until they were close upon the company at the boulders; then, lest she seem ungrateful, and also with a definite purpose to warn him, she turned to speak to him. He was not among those who followed in the rear. She breathed more freely, scarcely able to restrain a cry of relief, for surely he had escaped; and presently she said to the tall man:—
“Methinks I thanked not your companion sufficiently for the service he did me. Will you bear him a message of gratitude?”
“I will speak with him as soon as the parade is over.”
It was best to end the matter thus, than to see him again face to face; for she felt she dared not trust her shaken nerves in another interview, lest the warning she wished to convey turn into a betrayal. He must have realized his danger, and gone at once.
Her escape was the subject of much rejoicing; even Lord Cornwallis, to whom an account of the accident was carried, sent his aide with congratulations, and Barry came back at a lope, looking like a ghost with anxiety. She heard not a half of what was said, her mind was in such a tumult of perplexity as to her rightful course and of anxiety for her Clevering friends. Naturally her companions attributed her silence and abstraction to her recent fright, and gave no thought to it. She was infinitely relieved when the parade was over, and they were once more on the homeward road. Her horse had recovered from his panic, and was moving along quietly.
“If he had to run away, why could he not have given me the chance to save you?” Barry said, with much chagrin, longing to show his devotion and gain some hold upon her thoughts.
“Perhaps he knew that with you at hand he would have no chance,” she answered with a forced smile, dragging her mind from the dread that haunted it.
It was mid-winter; the remnants of a snowstorm still bleached in the sheltered places among the fields, and whiter yet on the sloping sides of the mountains behind which the sun had just set, leaving them framed and fringed with yellow fire. The river at their base was hidden in its banks and could only be guessed at; but the nestling town had caught a reflection of radiance from the sunset banners flying above it, and stood out like some sculptured bas-relief against the downward-dropping hills. Like the fine colours in an opal, the lights came and went, brightened and faded. Joscelyn’s pulse had begun to beat normally under the spell of the ethereal beauty of the scene, when suddenly far up the mountain road her keen eyes descried a moving figure. The trees were nude of foliage, and the snow lying along the winding road was as a reflector to show up the dark moving object, which for a moment was seen and then lost to sight behind a clump of cedars. Was it a cow, or a man on horseback? A strange curiosity took hold of the girl; she thought she alone saw it, and all sorts of speculations were in her mind when her reverie was rudely broken by the officer on her right.
“Linsey,” he said in a whisper which Joscelyn’s straining ears caught, at the same time lifting his finger toward the mountain; “Linsey, an I mistake not, yonder goes our spy; gallop at once to Colonel Tarleton, and bid him warn his scouts.”
The aide touched his cap and was gone ere Joscelyn’s startled breath came back.