"Shame on you
for doubting a lady's word! Allow me to present to you--Colonel Sevier."
Tipton turned, stared as a man might who sees a ghost, and broke into
such profanity as I have seldom heard.
"By the eternal God, John Sevier," he shouted, "I'll hang you to the
nearest tree!"
Colonel Sevier merely made a little ironical bow and looked at the
gentleman beside him.
"I have surrendered to Colonel Love," he said.
Tipton snatched from his belt the pistol which he might have used on me,
and there flashed through my head the thought that some powder might yet
be held in its pan. We cried out, all of us, his men, the widow, and
myself,--all save Sevier, who stood quietly, smiling. Suddenly, while
we waited for murder, a tall figure shot out of the door past the widow,
the pistol flew out of Tipton's hand, and Tipton swung about with
something like a bellow, to face Mr. Nicholas Temple.
Well I knew him! And oddly enough at that time Riddle's words of long
ago came to me, "God help the woman you love or the man you fight." How
shall I describe him? He was thin even to seeming frailness,--yet it
was the frailness of the race-horse. The golden hair, sun-tanned, awry
across his forehead, the face the same thin and finely cut face of the
boy. The gray eyes held an anger that did not blaze; it was far more
dangerous than that.
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