Page:Milady at Arms (1937).pdf/180

 Sally, apparently loitering idly out into the garden, watched with keen eyes the swirling clouds of dust settle back into place. Even after peace returned to the country road she made no hasty movement, for fear of Tory gaze from some quiet underbrush. As she plucked a late rose here, a marigold there, however, her thoughts were darting this way and that, planning, planning. She must save Uzal Ball from capture, not only for the sake of the kindness he had shown toward her, but because of his mother, who had taken the homeless little orphan into her house and made her welcome! But how was this warning to be gotten to Uzal, with the red-coats already upon their way thither!

There was but one way, Sally decided—she must go across the mountain path through the forest, many feet above the Second Road, many feet above the mountain plantations, and she must go a-horseback, despite the fact that the trail was only a narrow, dangerous footpath, for there was no time to be lost.

"No time to be lost; but where are the horses?" For the first time Sally thought of the horses and realized the amazing precaution Zenas had taken in hiding them, thus displaying an exceedingly wise head upon his young shoulders. For had the red-coats discovered the horses, all would have been lost!

Fortune now seemed to favor the girl. At that