ridge-pole."

Given a hearing, Jennifer would have spoiled it all by swearing hotly he
had given no parole, but at the word the colonel roared him down like a
bull of Bashan, and in the hubbub my brave lad was hustled out.

Though I was full to bursting with my news there was nothing I could do;
and when it was fairly over and he was gone, I was right glad he had not
seen me. For I knew well his steel-true loyalty, and that at sight of me
in trouble he would have lost his slender chance of guarded liberty,
and with it my last hope of sending word across the mountains; though,
as for that, the hope was well-nigh dead at any rate.

While Jennifer's guard and quota were mounting at the door the
aide-de-camp returned, and that without the baronet. I caught but here
and there a word of his report; enough to gather that the captain-knight
was not yet in from posting out the sentries.

I made no doubt his absence was designed. He would have Margery believe
that he had spared me honorably as an enemy wounded, and so had left me
to the tender mercies of his colonel, well assured that Tarleton would
not spare me. And this the colonel did not mean to do, as I was now to
hear in brief.

"You put a bold front on, Captain Ireton, but 'tis to no purpose, this
time," he began. "'Tis charged against you that you rode here from the
baron's camp with your commission in your pocket, and came and went
within our lines like any other spy. You are a soldier, sir, and you
know that's hanging. Yet I will hear you if you've anything to say."