them are noble, in their way."

I laughed. "I've read about those noble ones," I said. "'Twas in a book
called 'Hakluyt's Voyages.' Truly, I know them not as you do, for in my
youth I knew them most in war. We called them brave but cruel then; and
when I was a boy I could have shown you where, within a mile of this,
they burned poor Davie Davidson at the stake."

"Ah, yes; there has been much of that," he sighed. "But you must
confess, Captain Ireton, that you English carry fire and sword among
them, too."

From that he would have told me more about the savages, but I was
interested nearer home. As I have said, I was like any prisoner in a
dungeon for lack of news, and so by degrees I fetched him round to
telling me of what was going on beyond my window-sight of lawn and
forest.

Brave deeds were to the fore, it seemed. At Ramsour's Mill, a few miles
north and west, some little handful of determined patriots had bested
thrice their number of the king's partizans, and that without a leader
bigger than a county colonel. Lord Rawdon, in command of Lord
Cornwallis's van, had come as far as Waxhaw Creek, but, being
unsupported, had withdrawn to Hanging Rock. Our Mr. Rutherford was on
his way to the Forks of Yadkin to engage the Tories gathering under
Colonel Bryan. As yet, it seemed, we had no force of any consequence to
take the field against Cornwallis, though there were flying rumors of an
army marching from Virginia, with a new-appointed general at its head.

On the whole it was the king's cause that prospered, and the rising wave
of invasion bade fair to inundate the land. So thought my kindly gossip;
and, having naught to gain or lose in the great war, or rather having
naught to lose and everything to gain, whichever way these worldly cards
might run, he was a fair, impartial witness.

As you may well suppose, this news awoke in me the lust of battle, and I
must chafe the more for having it. And while my visitor talked on, and I
was listening with the outward ear, my brain was busy putting two and
two together. How came it that the British outpost still remained at
Queensborough, with my Lord Rawdon withdrawn and the patriot home guard
well down upon its rear? Some urgent reason for the stay there must be;
and at that I remembered what Darius had told me of its captain's
waiting for some messenger from the south.

I scored this matter with a question mark, putting it aside to think on
more when I should be alon