Page:Mistress Madcap Surrenders (1926).pdf/151

 Mehitable caught her breath and glanced nervously around the moonlit glen. Yonder waited the Indian, cold, aloof, impassive. What could be delaying her brother? she asked herself. Why did he not return? The Whippanong River was only a short ways back. Surely John had not been intercepted upon that short stretch of road. Then, as she listened, the sound of hoof-beats came to her ears, and she turned in acute relief to Sturgins.

"There be the Captain!" she said, brightening. But Sturgins fell back upon the ground with a bitter groan, and, glancing at Gray Hawk, Mehitable was alarmed to see him crouched forward in an attitude of tense listenings.

"It be more than one horse! Can't ye hear? Gad, an it be the Tories again!" All at once, to Mehitable's fright, he turned over and pounded the snow with convulsive hand. "We be lost! Hawtree and Jaffray—they threatened to follow me—I was not going to scare ye by telling ye so—but now what matters it? 'Tis them—'tis them!"

"Ah, no, Sturgins!" Mehitable half sobbed it. But before she could say more, before she could move, horsemen galloped past on the road, coming from the direction of Morris Town.

Now, all would have gone well, in spite of the moonlight, for Gray Hawk, like a flash, had withdrawn behind a tree, where he and his horse melted