o gently. In the breast pocket of my
hussar jacket they found that accursed duplicate despatch; the one I had
taken from Tybee and which had so nearly proved my undoing in the
interview with Major Ferguson.

Isaac Shelby opened and read the accusing letter and passed it around
among his colleagues.

"I shall not ask you why this was undelivered, sir," he said to me,
sternly. "'Tis enough that it was found upon your person, and it
sufficiently proves the truth of this gentleman's accusation. Have you
aught further to say, Captain Ireton?--aught that may excuse us for not
leaving you behind us in a halter?"

Do you wonder, my dears, that I lost my head when I saw how completely
the toils of this little black-clothed fiend had closed around me?
Twice, nay, thrice I tried to speak calmly as the crisis demanded. Then
mad rage ran away with me, and I burst out in yelling curses so hot they
would surely dry the ink in the pen were I to seek to set them down
here.

'Twas a silly thing to do, you will say, and much beneath the dignity of
a grown man who cared not a bodle for his life, and not greatly for the
manner of its losing. I grant you this; and yet it was that same
bull-bellow of soldier profanity that saved my life. Whilst I was in the
storm of it, cursing the lawyer by every shouted epithet I could lay
tongue to, a miracle was wrought and Richard Jennifer and Ephraim
Yeates pushed their way through the ever-thickening ring of onlookers;
the latter to range himself beside me with his brown-barreled rifle in
the hollow of his arm, and my dear lad to fling himself upon me in a
bear's hug of joyous recognition and greeting.

"Score one for me, Jack!" he cried. "We were fair at t'other end of the
mountain, and 'twas I told Eph there was only one man in the two
Carolinas who could swear the match of that." Then he whirled upon my
judges. "What is this, gentlemen?--a court martial? Captain Ireton is my
friend, and as true a patriot as ever drew breath. What is your charge?"

Colonel Sevier, in whose command Richard and the old borderer had fought
in the hilltop battle, undertook to explain. I stood self-confessed as
the bearer of despatches from Lord Cornwallis to Major Ferguson, he
said, and I had claimed that the orders had been so altered as to delay
the major's retreat and so to bring on the battle. But they had just
found Lord Cornwallis's letter in my pocket, still sealed and
undelivered. And the tenor of it was p