Weak and fever-shaken as I was, I yet made shift to get upon my elbow
feebly fierce, denouncing it hotly for a lie.

"Who slandered her like this, Dick? Put a name to the cur, and as I live
and get my strength again, I'll hunt him down and choke him with that
lie!"

"Nay," he objected soberly; "that would be my quarrel, were there ever a
peg to hang a quarrel on. But it came by a sure hand, and one that is
friendly enough to all concerned. An old free borderer, Ephraim Yeates
by name, brought me the tale. He had been spying round at Appleby
Hundred, wanting to know, for some purpose of his own, why the redcoats
and Cherokees were hanging on so long; and this much he overheard one
night when he was outlying under the window of the withdrawing-room. He
says she was in a pretty passion at the baronet's slackness, stamping
her foot at him and lashing him with the taunt that he was afeard of one
or both of us."

I fell back on the bearskins to shut my eyes and call up all the might
of love to grapple with this fresh misery. It was in this fierce
conflict of faith against apparent fact that I descried the parting of
the ways for the lover and the husband.

Jennifer believed this most incredible thing, and yet he loved
her--would go on loving her, as he had said, in spite of all. That was
the lover's road, and I could never bear him company on it. Could I
believe her so pitiless cruel as this, I made sure no husband-love could
live beyond that moment of conviction.

But at this perilous pass the husband's road ran truer than the lover's.