t was when I passed it a few days agone."

"Then I will turn back and cross at Beattie's. 'Twill make you a risk
you need not take--to have me with you."

But I thought now that the upper ford might be guarded as well; and if
there must be a cutting of a road through the enemy's outpost line for
Dick, two could do it better than one. So I said:

"No; we are here now, and if need be I can lend you the weight of a
second blade to see you safe through."

"And you with your head humming like a basket of bees, as I make no
doubt it will?"

I laughed. "I should be but a sorry soldier and a sorrier friend if I
should let a love-tap with the flat of a blade make me fail you at the
pinch."

He reached across the little gap that parted us and grasped my hand.

"By God!" he swore, most feelingly, "you are as true as the steel you
carry, Jack Ireton!"

"Nay," said I, in honest shame; "I do confess I was thinking less of my
friend than of the importance of the errand he rides on."

"But if there should be a fight, you will spoil your chance of coming
peaceably to Charlotte and my Lord's headquarters."

"If I am recognized--yes. But the night is dark, and a brush with the
outpost need not betray me."

At this he consented grudgingly, and we pushed on to the crossing. Now
since this fording place of Master Macgowan's has marched into our
history, you will like to know what the historians do not tell you:
namely, how it was but a makeshift wading place, armpit deep over a
muddy bottom from the western bank to the bar above an island in
mid-stream, and deflecting thence through rocky shallows to a point on
the eastern bank some distance below the island. 'Twas here that Lord
Cornwallis got entangled some months later--but I must not anticipate.

We made the crossing of the main current in safety and were a-splash in
the rocky shallows beyond the island when we sighted the camp-fires of
the outpost. To ride straight upon the patrol was to invite disaster,
and though Jennifer was for a charging dash, a hurly-burly with the
steel, and so on to freedom beyond, he listened when I pointed out that
our beasts were too nearly outworn to charge, and that the noise we must
make would rouse the camp and draw the fire of every piece in it long
before we could reach the bank and come to blade work.

"What for it, then?" he asked, impatiently. "My courage is freezing
whilst we wait."

"There is nothing for it but to hold straight on