“Were going to hang him,” Marion said grimly. “Fortunately they called at the forge, I was here, and Major Craven appealed to me. I interfered—” “And they cried ‘King’s Cruse,’ I warrant you!” Wilmer struck in. “Well, they withdrew the stakes,” Marion said with a ghost of a smile. “They were not a very gallant five. So all is well that ends well—as it has in this case, Wilmer. In this case! But—” “But what was Con doing?” Wilmer cried turning to me. “That she let them take you out of the house?” I fancied that the moment he had spoken he would have recalled his words; and acting on an impulse which I did not stay to examine, “She did what she could, I have no doubt,” I answered. “What could she do? Colonel Marion may think little of facing five men—” “Five corn-stalks!” he interpolated lightly. “But for a woman it’s another matter! A very different matter!” “And yet,” Wilmer said—but I thought that he breathed more freely—“Con is not exactly a boarding-school miss. She’s—” “She’s my god-daughter for one thing,” Marion said with a smile. “I should have thought that she could manage a cur like Levi!” “And four others?” I said. “Come, come!” He shrugged his shoulders, but I saw that he was relieved by my words. “Well, it’s over now,” he said, “and she will tell us her own tale. I have no doubt that she did what she could. For the rest, I’ll talk to Levi, Colonel, be sure. I am with you, that we have had too much of this. But that can wait. The Major looks shaken and the sooner he’s in bed again the better. Never was a man more unlucky!” “I am afraid that others have been still more unlucky,” Marion said gravely. And I knew that he referred to some incident unknown to me. “But you are right, let us go. I am anxious to see my god-daughter and almost as anxious to see a pair of sheets for once.” He said good-night to the old smith and we started. Marion and Wilmer rode ahead, I followed, Marion’s two men brought up the rear. So we retraced the way that I had traveled an hour before in stress of mind and blackness and despair. The night cloaked me in solitude, stilled the fever in my blood, laid its cool touch on my heated brow; and far be it from me to deny that I hastened to render thanks where, above all, thanks were due. I had been long enough in this land of immense distances, of wide rivers and roadless forests—wherein our little army was sometimes lost, as a pitch-fork in a hay-stack—to appreciate the thousand risks that lay between us and home, and to know how little a man could command his own fate, or secure his own life.