He rattled all this off glibly, like a child repeating some lesson got by heart; but when I would have found a grain of comfort in the hope that it was a farrago of Falconnet's lies, Jennifer made the truth appear in answer to a curt question. "'Tis beyond doubt?--all this, Mr. Stair?" The old loyalist--loyalist now, if never certainly before--sat down on the settle and laughed; a dry wizened cackle of a laugh that sounded like the crumpling of new parchment. "You'd best be off, light foot and tight foot, Master Richard, lest you learn shrewdly for yourself. 'Tis in everybody's mouth by this. There were some five-and-forty of the king's friends come together here no longer ago than yestere'en to drink his Majesty's health, and eh, man! but it will cost me a pretty penny! Will that satisfy ye?" "Yes," said Jennifer, thinking, mayhap, as I did, that nothing short of gospel-true news would have sufficed to unlock this poor old miser's wine cellar. "Well, then; you'd best be off while you may; d'ye hear? I bear ye no ill-will, Richard Jennifer; and if Mr. Tarleton lays hold of you, you'll hang higher than Haman for evading your parole, I promise you. We'll say naught about this rape of the door-lock, though 'tis actionable, sir, and I'll warn you the law would make you smart finely for it. But we'll enter a _nolle prosequi_ on that till you're amnestied and back, then you can pay me the damage of the broken lock and we'll cry quits." At this my straightforward Richard snorted in wrathful derision. However much he loved the daughter, 'twas clear he had small regard for the father. "Seeing we came to do you a service, Mr. Stair, I think we may set the blunderbuss and the handful of slugs over against the smashed door. And that fetches me back to our errand here. You say Madge is safe. Does that mean that you have spirited her away since last night?" "Dinna fash yoursel' about Madge, Richard Jennifer. She's meat for your betters, sir!" rasped the old man, lapsing into the mother tongue, as he did now and then in fear or anger. "Still I would know what you mean when you say she is safe," says Richard, whose determination to crack a nut was always proportioned to the hardness of the shell. Gilbert Stair cursed him roundly for an impertinent jackanapes, and then gave him his answer. "'Tis none of your business, Dickie Jennifer, but you may know and be hanged to you! She rode home with the Witherbys last night after the rout, and will be by this safe away in t'other Carolina where your cursed Whiggeries darena lift head or hand." "Of her own free will?" Dick persisted. "Damme! yes; bag, baggage, serving wench and all. Now will you be off about your business before some spying rascal lays an information against me for harboring you?" Richard joined me on the door-stone. The dawn was in its twilight now, and the great trees on the lawn were taking gray and ghostly shapes in the dim perspective. "You heard what he had to say?" said he.