Henry, "hemp
is an article that would rise in price."

"What, sir," returned the officer, with a look of surprise, "do you
class yourself with the rebels? What makes you here under Tarleton's
safeguard? I thought you must needs be friends, at least, from the
manner of your coming."

"We ride, sir, where we have occasion," said Henry, "and if we ride
wrong now, let his lordship decide that for us, and we will return."

By this time the company had reached head-quarters, where Mildred found
herself in the presence of Lord Cornwallis.

"Though on the wing, Miss Lindsay," said his lordship, as he
respectfully met the lady and her brother upon the porch of the
dwelling-house, "I have made it a point of duty to postpone weighty
matters of business to receive your commands."

Mildred bowed her head, and after a few words of courtesy on either
side, and a formal introduction of herself and her brother to the
general as the children of Philip Lindsay, "a gentleman presumed to be
well known to his lordship," and some expressions of surprise and
concern on the part of the chief at this unexpected announcement, she
begged to be permitted to converse with him in private. When, in
accordance with this wish, she found herself and her brother alone with
the general, in the small parlor of the house, she began, with a
trembling accent and blanched cheek--

"I said, my lord, that we were the children of Philip Lindsey, of the
Dove Cote, in Amherst, in the province of Virginia; and being taught to
believe that my father has some interest with your lordship--"

"He is a worthy, thoughtful, and wise gentleman, of the best
consideration amongst the friends of the royal cause," interrupted the
earl, "so speak on, madam, and speak calmly. Take your time, your
father's daughter shall not find me an unwilling listener."

"My father was away from home," interposed Henry, "and tidings came to
us that a friend of ours was most wickedly defamed and belied, by a
charge carried to the ears of your lordship; as we were told, that Major
Arthur Butler of the Continental army who had been made a prisoner by
your red-coats somehow or other--for I forget how--but the charge was
that he had contrived a plan to carry off my father from the Dove
Cote--if not to kill him, which was said, besides--and upon that charge,
it was reported that your people were going to hang or shoot him--hang,
I suppose, from what we just now saw over here in the woods--and