"Content yourself," said my young Hotspur, grandly. "If you spare him he
shall answer to me for that thing he said of Madge Stair; this though I
know not what it was he said."

I smiled at his fuming ardor, and glancing at the pair of pistols
hanging from his saddle-bow, asked if he could shoot.

"Indifferent well."

"Then make him challenge you and choose your own weapon. 'Tis your only
hope, and poor enough at that, I fear. I have heard he can clip a
guinea at ten paces."

From that we fell silent again, being but a little way from the
rendezvous, and so continued until, at a sudden turn in the road, we
came in sight of a rude barricade of felled trees barring the way.
Jennifer saw it first and pulled up short, loosing his pistols in their
cases as he drew rein.

"'Ware the wood!" he said sharply, and none too soon, for even as he
spoke the glade at our left filled as by magic with a motley troop
deploying into the road as to surround us.

"Now who are these?" I asked; "friends or foes?"

"Foes who will hang you in your own halter strap; Jan Howart's
Tories--the same that burned the Westcotts in their cabin a fortnight
since. Will your horse take that barricade, think you?"