n like
molten steel through the veins of the gathering hosts, and the people
took up the gauntlet of war with a laugh and a cheer and shook their
clenched hands at the King who was over the sea; so it was the length
and breadth of the province, and so it was with me.

And so one day the signal came, and I mounted my black colt Toby and
rode away to the Head of Elk in the county of Cecil, where the
mustering was, to take my place, as it was my duty and right to do,
side by side with the bravest gentlemen of the province in the coming
struggle for the Great Cause.

I was eighteen in the month of March of that year and considered
myself a man, and, having reached man's estate, I bade good-bye to my
mother and rode from out the sheltering walls and groves of Fairlee.

But just before I rode within the shadow of the great woods I turned
in my saddle and waved my hand to the small, quaint figure that stood
on the broad porch watching me disappear; and she bravely--for the
women were brave in those days--waved her hand in return, and then I
rode on, for the moment saddened at the parting, for the die that day
would be cast, and, though there would be mustering and drilling for
many weeks before we took up our march to the northward, the hand of
the cause would claim me as its own.

I was riding thus through the forest when I heard hoof-beats behind me
and a cheery halloo, and who should ride up but Dick Ringgold of
Hunting Field, a lad of my own age and my true friend?

"Why such a long face?" he laughed. "You look as if you were going to
a funeral and not to a hunt that will beat all the runs to the hounds
in the world. We are going to hunt redcoats and fair ladies' smiles
and not foxes now; so cheer up, man."

"Plague on it, Dick, you are ten miles from home and I am only one," I
retorted. "You ought to have seen how bravely her ladyship tried to
smile, too."

"We will increase the number of miles then," said he, and reaching
over he struck Toby across the flank. Well, Toby needs the curb at
best, and it was a full half-mile before I brought him up and had a
chance to give Dick a rating.

But Dick only laughed.

And so we rode on, across the low-lying plains of Kent, northward
toward the borders of Cecil.

For miles we would ride under the shadow of the dense forest, and then
we would come to the wide-reaching fields of some great manor or
plantation, the manor house itself generally crowning some gently
rising