"My father is away to-night. Will you not come?"

"But, Rebecca----"

"I have never asked a thing of you before."

"But, Rebecca----"

"Will you come for Hortense's sake?" she interrupted, with a little
sharp, hard, falsetto note in her baby voice.

"Rebecca," I demanded, "what do you mean?"

But she snapped back like the peevish child that she was: "An you come
not when I ask you, you may stay!" And she had gone.

What was she trying to say with her dark hints and overnice scruples of
a Puritan conscience? And was not that Jack Battle greeting her
outside in the dark?

I tore after Rebecca at such speed that I had cannoned into open arms
before I saw a hulking form across the way.

"Fall-back--fall-edge!" roared Jack, closing his arms about me. "'Tis
Ramsay himself, with a sword like a butcher's cleaver and a wit like a
broadaxe!"

"Have you not heard, Jack?"