The Master of Appleby | Page 7

Tarleton's outposts were already widespread on the upper waters of the Broad and the Catawba. Thus it was that the first sight which greeted my eyes when I rode into Queensborough was the familiar trappings of my old service, and I was made to know that in spite of Mr. Jefferson's boldly written Declaration of Independence, and that earlier casting of the king's yoke by the patriotic Mecklenburgers themselves, my boyhood home was for the moment by sword-right a part of his Majesty's province of North Carolina.
You are not to suppose that these things moved me greatly. As yet I was chiefly concerned with my own affair and anxious to learn at first hands the cost to me of my father's connection with the Regulators.
Touching this, I was not long kept in ignorance. Of all the vast demesne of Appleby Hundred there was no roof to shelter the son of the outlawed Roger Ireton save that of this poor hunting lodge in the mighty forest of the Catawba, overlooked, with the few runaway blacks inhabiting it, in the intaking of an estate so large that I think not even my father knew all the metes and bounds of it.
I shall not soon forget the interview with the lawyer in which I was told the inhospitable truth. Nor shall I forget his truculent leer when he hinted that I had best be gone out of these parts, since it was not yet too late to bring down the sentence of outlawry from the father to the son.
It was well for him that I knew not at the time that he was Gilbert Stair's factor. For I was mad enough to have throttled him where he sat at his writing table, matching his long fingers and smirking at me with his evil smile. But of this man more in his time and place. His name was Owen Pengarvin. I would have you remember it.
For a week and a day I lingered on at Queensborough, for what I knew not, save that all the world seemed suddenly to have grown stale and profitless, and my life a thing of small account. One day I would be minded to go back to my old field-marshal and the keeping of the Turkish border; the next I would ride over some part of my stolen heritage and swear a great oath to bide till I should come to my own again. And on these alternating days the storm of black rage filled my horizons and I became a derelict to drive on any rock or shoal in this uncharted sea of wrath.
On one of these gallops farthest afield I chanced upon the bridle-path that led to our old hunting lodge in the forest depths. Tracing the path to its end among the maples I found the cabin, so lightly touched by time that the mere sight of it carried me swiftly back to those happy days when my father and I had stalked the white-tailed deer in the hill glades beyond, with this log-built cabin for a rest-camp. I spurred up under the low-hanging trees. The door stood wide, and a thin wreath of blue smoke curled upward from the mouth of the wattled chimney.
Then and there I had my first welcome home. Old black Darius--old when I had last seen him at Appleby Hundred, and a very grandsire of ancients now--was one of the runaways who made the forest lodge a refuge. He had been my father's body-servant, and, notwithstanding all the years that lay between, he knew me at once.
Thereupon, as you would guess, I came immediately into some small portion of my kingdom. Though Darius was the patriarch, the other blacks were also fugitives from Appleby Hundred; and for the son of Roger Ireton there was instant vassalage and loyal service. But best of all, on my first evening before the handful of fire in the great fire-place, Darius brought me a package swathed in many wrappings of Indian-tanned deerskin. It contained my father's sword, and, more precious than this, a message from the dead. My father's farewell was written upon a leaf torn from his journal, and was but a hasty scrawl. I here transcribe it.
My Son:
_I know not if this will ever come into your hands, but it and my sword shall be left in trust with the faithful Darius. We have made our ill-timed cast for liberty and it has failed, and to-morrow I and five others are to die at the rope's end. I bequeath you my sword--'tis all the tyrant hath left me to devise--and my blessing to go with it when you, or another Ireton, shall once more bare the true old blade in the sacred cause of liberty._
Thy father, Roger Ireton.

You may be sure I conned