rs she remained unharmed,
except in respect of heavy Government requisitions, which of course she
had to pay, and it was not until the redcoats appeared about our house,
that much serious evil came to it.

CHAPTER XC

In which we both fight and run away

What was the use of a Colonel without a regiment? The Governor and
Council who had made such a parade of thanks in endowing me with mine,
were away out of sight, skulking on board ships, with an occasional
piracy and arson on shore. My Lord Dunmore's black allies frightened
away those of his own blood; and besides these negroes whom he had
summoned round him in arms, we heard that he had sent an envoy among
the Indians of the South, and that they were to come down in numbers
and tomahawk our people into good behaviour. "And these are to be our
allies!" I say to my mother, exchanging ominous looks with her, and
remembering, with a ghastly distinctness, that savage whose face glared
over mine, and whose knife was at my throat when Florac struck him down
on Braddock's Field. We put our house of Castlewood into as good a state
of defence as we could devise; but, in truth, it was more of the red men
and the blacks than of the rebels we were afraid. I never saw my mother
lose courage but once, and then when she was recounting to us the
particulars of our father's death in a foray of Indians more than forty
years ago. Seeing some figures one night moving in front of our house,
nothing could persuade the good lady but that they were savages, and
she sank on her knees crying out, "The Lord have mercy upon us! The
Indians--the Indians!"

My lord's negro allies vanished on board his ships, or where they could
find pay and plunder; but the painted heroes from the South never made
their appearance, though I own to have looked at my mother's grey head,
my wife's brown hair, and our little one's golden ringlets, with a
horrible pang of doubt lest these should fall the victims of ruffian
war. And it was we who fought with such weapons, and enlisted these
allies! But that I dare not (so to speak) be setting myself up as
interpreter of Providence, and pointing out the special finger of Heaven
(as many people are wont to do), I would say our employment of these
Indians, and of the German mercenaries, brought their own retribution
with them in this war. In the field, where the mercenaries were attacked
by the Provincials, they yielded, and it was triumphing over them that
so r