XX

IN WHICH WE STRIVE AS MEN TO RUN A RACE


It was some time before the affrighted black could give us any connected
account of what had befallen; and when at length the story was told, all
save the principal fact of the carrying off of Mistress Margery and her
maid was hazy enough.

Pruned down to the simple statement of the fact, and with all the
foolish terror chatterings weeded out, his news came to this: the party
of homing revelers had been ambushed and waylaid at the fording of a
creek some miles to the southward, and in the mellay the young mistress
and her tire-woman had been captured.

So far as any actual witness of the eye went, the negro had seen
nothing. There had been a volley fire from the thicket-belly of black
darkness, a swarming attack to a chorus of Indian yells, shouts from the
men, shrieks from the women, confusion worse confounded in which the
newsbearer himself had been unhorsed and trodden under foot. After which
he knew no more till some one--his master, as he thought--kicked him
alive and bade him mount and ride post-haste on the backward track to
Appleby Hundred, crying the news as he went that Mistress Margery Stair
and her maid had been kidnapped by the Indians.

Pinned to the mark and questioned afresh, the slave could not affirm of
his own knowledge that any one had been killed outright. Pinned again,