k," he promised. "If you are wakeful I
will talk to you and tell you what little I have gleaned about the
fighting."

His news was chiefly a later repetition of Father Matthieu's and Captain
Abram Forney's, but there was this to add: the Congress had appointed
the Englishman, Horatio Gates, chief of the army in the South, and this
new leader was on his way to take command.

De Kalb, with the Maryland and Delaware lines and Colonel Armand's
legion, was encamped on Deep River, waiting for the newly-appointed
general; and Caswell and Griffith Rutherford, with the militia, were
already pressing forward to some handgrips with my Lord Cornwallis in
the South.

Nearer at hand, the partizan war-fire flamed afresh wherever a Tory
company met a patriot, and there were wicked doings, more like savage
massacres than fair-fought battles of the soldier sort.

When he had made an end of his small war budget, I set him on to tell me
how he came to be at hand to help me so in the nick of time on the night
of the cabin sack.

"'Twas partly chance," he said. "A redcoat troop had me in durance at
Jennifer House, and while they affected to hold me at parole, I never
gave consent to that, and so was kept a prisoner. They shut me in the
wine-bin with a guard, and when the fellow was well soaked and silly, I
bound and gagged him and broke jail. I took the river for it, meaning to
outlie until the hue and cry was over; and just at dusk Uncanoola
dropped upon me and told me of your need. From that to helping him cut
you out of your raffle with the Cherokees was but a hand's turn in the
day's work."

"A lucky turn for me," I said; and then at second thought I would deny
the saying, though not for him to hear. But this was dangerous ground
again, and I clawed off from it like a desperate mariner tempest-driven
on a lee shore; asking him how he had learned the broadsword play, and
where he got the antique claymore.

He laughed heartily, and more like my care-free Dick, this time.

"Thereby hangs a tale. I told you how I was out with the Minute Men in
'76 at Moore's Creek, where we fought the Scotchmen. It was our first
pitched battle, and I opine it smelled somewhat of severity on both
sides--no quarter was asked, and the Tory MacDonalds fought like fiends
for King George, small cause as they had to love the House of Hanover."

"How was that?" I would ask, being as little familiar with the low
country settlements as any native-born Carol