"No; you are a soldier, and--and I will not be a gallows-widow. Do you hear, sir? If you are so eager to die, there is always the battle-field." And with that she left me. I may pass over the two succeeding days in the silence I was condemned to endure through the major part of them. After that first visit, Margery came only at stated intervals to bring me food and drink, and my nurse was an old black beldame, either deaf and dumb, or else so newly from the Guinea Coast as to be unable to twist her tongue to the English. And in the food-bringings I could neither make my lady stay nor answer any question; this though I was hungering to know what was going on beyond the walls of my garret prison. Indeed, she would not even tell me how I had been spirited away from the two sergeants keeping watch over me in her father's strong-room below stairs. "That is Scipio's secret," she would say, laughing at me, "and he shall keep it." But in the evening of the third day the mystery bubble was burst, and I learned from Margery's lips the thing I longed to know. Lord Cornwallis had decided to abandon North Carolina, and in an hour or two the army would be in motion for withdrawal to the southward. "Now, thanks be to God!" I said, most fervently. "King's Mountain has begun the good work, and we shall show Farmer George a thing or two he had not guessed." On this, my lady drew herself up most proudly and her lip curled. "You forget, sir, you are speaking to Mr. Gilbert Stair's daughter." "True," said I; "I did forget. We are at cross purposes in this, as in all things else. I crave your pardon, Madam." Her eyes were snapping by now. Never tell me, my dears, that eyes of the blue-gray can not flash fire when they will. "How painstakingly you will go about to make me hate you!" she burst out. And then, all in the same breath: "But you will be rid of me presently, for good and all." "Nay, then, Mistress Margery, you are always taking an ell of meaning for my inch of speech. 'Tis I who should do the ridding." "_Mon Dieu!_" she cried, in a sudden burst of petulance; "I am sick to death of all this! Is there no way out of this coil that is strangling us both, Captain Ireton?" "I had thought to make a way three days ago; did so make it, but you kept me from walking in it. Yet that way is still open--if you will but drop a word in my Lord's ear when you go below stairs." "Oh, yes--a fine thing; the wife betray the husband!" This with another lip-curl of scorn. "I have some shreds and patches of pride left, sir, if you have not." "Then free me of my obligation to you and let me do it myself. I am well enough to hang." "And so make me a consenting accomplice? Truly, as I have said before, you have a most knightly soul, Captain Ireton." I closed my eyes in very weariness. "You are hard to please, my lady." "You have not to try to please me, sir. I am going away--to-night." "Going away?" I echoed. "Whither, if I may ask?"