hom you have told me so much, is enlisting men."

"Yes, mother, and there is no finer man for a leader than he, unless
it is Washington."

"I've thought, since Angus came home, that you were wishing you might
enter the service."

Rodney looked up quickly. "Why, if I could get away I'd like to go,
but I--my duty is at home."

"I am well, now," she said, "and affairs are in such condition I think
we can care for them."

"But--er--no, I ought not to."

"My boy, you have my permission, indeed I'm not sure but it is your
duty to give your service, your young life perhaps, to the cause of
liberty."

Rodney sprang up, his face aflame with eagerness. "Do you mean it,
mother?"

"Some one must fight our battles if we are to win. Your father is not
here to go to the front, as he would have done had he lived, and--and
I feel sure he would like to have the house of Allison represented in
a cause he had so much at heart, and I'm afraid I should make a poor
soldier, Rodney."

"Mother, you are braver than any soldier who ever went to war!"

And so it happened that the following Monday, dressed in the homespun
of his mother's loom and carrying the rifle he had taken from the
lodge of the Wyandotte chieftain, Rodney Allison left for Winchester
to join Morgan's command.

CHAPTER XXIII

IN THE THICK OF IT

"Can ye shoot straight an' often, travel light, starve an' yet fight
on an empty stomach?"

"I've had some experience at that sort of thing, Colonel Morgan, and
think I can be of service in your command."

"Where have I seen you? Yer face looks familiar. I have it, your name
is Allison an' you were the little feller as showed me the way to the
rear of the redskins the day they ambushed Wood out in the Ohio
country. Want ye, I reckon I do! I want five hundred like ye."

And thus it was that Rodney found welcome when he presented himself to
Morgan at Winchester, and the welcome was so hearty that it helped put
the boy on friendly footing with his fellows at the start.

The march to Morristown was not very pleasant owing to the bad
condition of the roads. On the way recruits joined them so that on the
first of April, when they reached Washington's headquarters, they
numbered about one hundred and eighty men, considerably less than the
five hundred wanted.

One of the recruits who joined them on the march was a young man whose
reception by Morgan attracted general attention, it was so cordial.
He was a strai