I had been granted a hearing by Lord Cornwallis but a little
while before; that by my Lord's appointment I was now a sort of honorary
aide-de-camp.

"Good!" said the lieutenant, gripping my hand in a way to make me wince
for the lie-in-effect hidden in the simple statement of fact. Then he
roared at the soldier standing guard at the house door below: "A mount
for Captain Ireton--and be swift about it!"

He held me in talk till the horse was fetched, happily doing most of the
talking himself, and when I was in the saddle gave me a hearty
God-speed. Being so sick with self-despisings, I fear I made but a poor
return for all this good comradeship; but at the time I could think of
nothing but the hell that flamed within me, and of how I could soonest
quench the fires of it.

The town, which I had not seen since early summer, was but little
changed by the British occupation, save in the livening of it by the
near-at-hand camp of an armed host. Being but a halt-point _en route_ in
the northward march, it was not fortified; indeed, for the matter of
that, the camp proper was a little way without the town, as I have said.

I rode slowly across the common, skirting the commissary's quarters and
making mental notes of all I saw; this from soldier habit solely, for at
the time I had little thought of living on to make a spy's use of them.
Arrived at the parade ground, I found my Lord galloping through the
lines on inspection, and so I must draw rein in the background and wait
my opportunity.

The pause gave space for some eye-sweep of the scene, and all the
soldier blood in me was stirred by the sight, the first I had had in
many a day, of a well-ordered army, fit, disciplined, machine-drilled
to move like the parts of a wondrous mechanism.

At the back of Lord Cornwallis and his galloping suite, Tarleton's
famous light-horse legion was drawn up; and fronting it was the
infantry, rank on rank, the glittering bayonets slanting in the October
sunlight as the regiments moved into place, or standing in rigid groves
of steel at the command to halt and port arms.

What was there in all our poor raw land to stand against this
well-trained host, armed--as we were not--with the deadly bayonet, and
moving as one man at the word of command? Not the bravest home guard or
militia troop, I thought; and this seeing of what he had had to front on
the field of Camden made me think less scornfully of Horatio Gates.

Riding presently around