"Go!" I stammered, pushing him towards the horse; "get into your saddle! Quick, I tell you--I--I can't endure this! I am not made to endure everything, I tell you! Can't you have a little mercy on me and leave me?" "I refuse," he said, sullenly. "You refuse!" I stammered, beside myself with the torture I could no longer bear. "Then stand aside! I'll go--I'll go if it costs me--No! No! I can't; I can't, I tell you; it costs too much!... Damn you, you may have the woman I love, but you shall leave me her respect!" "Ormond! Ormond!" he cried, in sorrowful amazement; but I was clean out of my head now, and I closed with him, dragging him towards the horse. He shook himself free, glaring at me. "I am ... your superior ... officer!" I panted, advancing on him; "I order you to go!" He looked me narrowly in the eyes. "And I refuse obedience," he said, hoarsely. "You are out of your mind!" "Then, by God!" I shrieked, "I'll force you!" Billy Bones, Francy McCraw, and a Seneca came hastening up. I leaped on McCraw and dealt him a blow full in his bony face, splitting the lean cheek open. They overpowered me before I could repeat the blow; they flung me down, kicking and pounding me as I lay there, but the death-stroke I awaited was withheld; the castete of the Seneca was jerked from his fist. Then they seized Sir George and forced him into his saddle, calling on four troopers to pilot him within sight of the manor and shoot him if he attempted to return. "You tell them that if they refuse to exchange Walter Butler for Ormond, we've torments for Colonel Ormond that won't kill him under a week!" roared Billy Bones. McCraw, stupefied with amazement and rage, stood mopping the blood from his blotched face, staring at me out of his crazy blue eyes. For a moment his hand fiddled with his hatchet, then Bones shoved him away, and he strode off towards his horsemen, who were forming in column of fours. "You tell 'em," shouted Bones, "that before we finish him they'll hear his screams in Albany! If they want Colonel Ormond," he added, his voice rising to a yell, "tell 'em to send a single man into the sugar-bush. But if they hang Walter Butler, or if you try to catch us with your cavalry, we'll take Ormond where we'll have leisure to see what our Senecas can do with him! Now ride! you damned--" He struck Sir George's horse with the flat of his hanger; the horse bounded off, followed by four of McCraw's riders, pistols cocked and hatchets loosened. Bruised, dazed, exhausted, I lay there, listening to the receding thudding of their horses' feet on the moss. The crisis was over, and I had won--not as I might have chosen to win, but by a compromise with death for deliverance from temptation.