ms,--and yet which was so nobly
sustained, amidst accumulated discomfitures, as to lead eventually to
the subversion of the "Tory ascendency" and the expulsion of the British
power. According to the plan of operations concerted amongst these
chieftains, Marion took the lower country under his supervision; Pickens
the south-western districts, bordering upon the Savannah; and to Sumpter
was allotted all that tract of country lying between the Broad and the
Catawba rivers, from the angle of their junction, below Camden, up to
the mountain districts of North Carolina. How faithfully these men made
good their promise to the country, is not only written in authentic
history, but it is also told in many a legend amongst the older
inhabitants of the region that was made the theatre of action. It only
concerns my story to refer to the fact, that the events which have
occupied my last five or six chapters, occurred in that range more
peculiarly appropriated to Sumpter, and that the high road from
Blackstock's towards Ninety-six was almost as necessary for
communication between Sumpter and Pickens, as between the several
British garrisons.

On the morning that succeeded the night in which Horse Shoe Robinson
arrived at Musgrove's, the stout and honest sergeant might have been
seen, about eight o'clock, leaving the main road from Ninety-six, at the
point where that leading to David Ramsay's separated from it, and
cautiously urging his way into the deep forest, by the more private path
into which he had entered. The knowledge that Innis was encamped along
the Ennoree, within a short distance of the mill, had compelled him to
make an extensive circuit to reach Ramsay's dwelling, whither he was now
bent; and he had experienced considerable delay in his morning journey,
by finding himself frequently in the neighborhood of small foraging
parties of Tories, whose motions he was obliged to watch for fear of an
encounter. He had once already been compelled to use his horse's heels
in what he called "fair flight;" and once to ensconce himself, a full
half hour, under cover of the thicket afforded him by a swamp. He now,
therefore, according to his own phrase, "dived into the little road
that scrambled down through the woods towards Ramsay's, with all his
eyes about him, looking out as sharply as a fox on a foggy morning:" and
with this circumspection, he was not long in arriving within view of
Ramsay's house. Like a practised soldier, whom