was up and hard at work. His tent table,
transformed for the time into a mechanic's work-bench, was littered with
gun-barrels and tools and screws and odd-shaped pieces of mechanism--the
disjointed parts of that breech-loading musket of which the ingenious
Scotchman was the inventor.

Being deep in the creative trance when we came upon him, the major gave
us but an absent-minded greeting, listening with the outward ear only
when Tybee reported his mission, and his capture and parole.

"From my Lord, ye say? I hope ye left him well," was all the answer the
Lieutenant got, the inventor fitting away at his gun-puzzle the while.

Tybee made proper rejoinder and stood aside to give me room. I drew a
sealed inclosure from my pocket and laid it on the work-bench table.

"I also have the honor to come from my Lord Cornwallis, bringing
despatches"--so far I got in my cut-and-dried speech, and then my tongue
clave to the roof of my mouth and I could no more finish the sentence
than could a man suddenly nipped in a vise. Instead of the carefully
doctored original, I had given the major the duplicate despatch taken
from Tybee.

Ah, my dears, that was a moment for swift thought and still swifter
action; and 'tis the Ireton genius to be slow and sure and no wise "gleg
at the uptak'," as a Scot would say. Yet for this once my good angel
gave me a prompting and the wit to use it. In that clock-tick of
benumbing despair when the success of the hazardous venture, and much
more that I wist not of, hung suspended by a hair over the abyss of
failure, I minded me of a boyish trick wherewith I used to fright the
timid blacks in the old days at Appleby Hundred. So whilst the major was
reaching for the packet--nay, when he had it in his hand--I started back
with a warning cry, giving that imitation of the ominous _skir-r-r_ of a
rattlesnake which had more than once got me a cuffing from my father.

In any crisis less tremendous I should have roared a-laughing to see the
doughty major and my good friend the lieutenant vie with each other in
their skippings to escape the unseen enemy. But it was no laughing
moment for me. At a flash my sword was out and I was hacking hither and
yon at the imaginary foe. In the hurly-burly I contrived to sprawl all
across the work-bench table, and the packet which would have killed my
plot--and, belike, the plotter as well--was secured and quickly juggled
into hiding.

"Damme! see now what you've done; you'