coming to see me. I know not how it was, but if there had been rancor in
my former thoughts of him 'twas something abated now.

"Ye've had a nearhand escape this time, sir," he said, after a longish
pause.

"One more or less of a good many since we were last met together in this
room, Mr. Stair," I would say.

He muttered something to himself about the devil taking precious good
care of his own; and I laughed.

"That is as it may be; but my being here this second time a pensioner on
your bounty is by no good will of mine, I do assure you, sir."

He sat nodding at me as if I had said a thing to be most heartily agreed
to. But his spoken word belied the nods.

"The ways of Providence are inscrutable--something inscrutable, Captain
Ireton. I make no doubt ye are sufficiently thankfu' for all your
mercies."

"Why, as to that, there may be two ways of looking at it. As a soldier,
I may justly repine at a fate which ties me here when I should be in the
field."

"Well said, sir; brawly said; 'tis the part of a good soldier to be ay
wanting to be in the thick o' the fighting. But now that ye're a man of
substance, Captain Ireton, ye will be owing other debts to our country
than the one ye can pay with a hantle o' steel."

"'Our country,' did you say, Mr. Stair?" I asked, feigning a surprise
which no one knowing him could feel in very truth.

"And what for no? 'Tis the birthland of some--yourself, for example, and
the leal land of adoption for others--your humble servant, to wit. I've
taken the solemn oath of allegiance to the Congress, I'd have ye to
know."

At this I must needs laugh outright.

"Have you taken it one more time than you have forsworn it, Mr. Stair?"

"Laugh and ye will," he said, quite placably; "ye shall never laugh the
peetriotism out o' me. 'Tis little enough an old man can do, but the
precious cause o' liberty will never have to ask that little twice,
Captain Ireton."

Since he would ever be on the winning side, this foreshadowed good
tidings, indeed. So I would ask him straight what news there was.

"Have they not told ye? 'Tis braw news," he chuckled. "Whilst ye were on
your back, General Greene led Lord Cornwallis a fine dance all across
the prov--the state, I mean, crooking his finger at him and saying,
'Come on, ye led-captain of a tyrant king, and when I'm ready I'll turn
and rend ye.' And by the same token, that is juist what he did the other
day at Guilford Court House."

"A vic