of the
water."

The old man reached out and hooked a lean finger in the lad's
buttonhole. "Say you so, Richard Jennifer? Then you will never have
heard the glorious news?" This with a leer that might have been of
triumph or the mere whetting of gossip eagerness--I could not tell.

"No," says Richard, with much indifference.

"Hear it, then. 'Twas at Camden, four days since. They came together in
the murk of the Wednesday morning, my Lord Cornwallis and that poor fool
Gates. De Kalb is dead; your blethering Irishman, Rutherford, is
captured; and your rag-tag rebel army is scattered to the four winds.
And that's not all. On the Friday, Colonel Tarleton came up with Sumter
at Fishing Creek and caught him napping. Whereupon, Charlie McDowell and
the over-mountain men, seeing all was lost, broke their camp on the
Broad and took to their heels, every man jack of them for himself. So ye
see, Dickie Jennifer, there's never a cursed corporal's guard left in
either Carolina to stand in the king's way."

He rattled all this off glibly, like a child repeating some lesson got
by heart; but when I would have found a grain of comfort in the hope
that it was a farrago of Falconnet's lies, Jennifer made the truth
appear in answer to a curt question.

"'Tis beyond doubt?--all this, Mr. Stair?"

The old loyalist--loyalist now, if never certainly before--sat down on
the settle and laughed; a dry wizened cackle of a laugh that sounded
like the crumpling of new parchment.

"You'd best be off, light foot and tight foot, Master Richard, lest you
learn shrewdly for yourself. 'Tis in everybody's mouth by this. There
were some five-and-forty of the king's friends come together here no
longer ago than yestere'en to drink his Majesty's health, and eh, man!
but it will cost me a pretty penny! Will that satisfy ye?"

"Yes," said Jennifer, thinking, mayhap, as I did, that nothing short of
gospel-true news would have sufficed to unlock this poor old miser's
wine cellar.

"Well, then; you'd best be off while you may; d'ye hear? I bear ye no
ill-will, Richard Jennifer; and if Mr. Tarleton lays hold of you, you'll
hang higher than Haman for evading your parole, I promise you. We'll say
naught about this rape of the door-lock, though 'tis actionable, sir,
and I'll warn you the law would make you smart finely for it. But we'll
enter a _nolle prosequi_ on that till you're amnestied and back, then
you can pay me the damage of the broken lock and w