he judges and their
adviser, to subject him to the severest law of confiscation. The
proceedings, however, had been delayed, not from any tenderness to the
proprietor, but, as it was whispered in the scandal of the day, on
account of certain dissensions, amongst a few prominent servants of the
British crown, as to which of them the privilege of a cheap purchase
should be extended. The matter was still in suspense, with a view (as
that busybody, common rumor, alleged) to reward a particular favorite of
the higher powers with the rich guerdon of these good lands, in
compensation for private and valuable secret services, rendered in a
matter of great delicacy and hazard--no less a service than that of
seducing into the arena of politics and intrigue, an opulent and
authoritative gentleman of Virginia, Mr. Philip Lindsay.

In consequence of the odious nature of the duty which Colonel Innis had
assumed to perform, he became peculiarly hateful to the Whigs; and this
sentiment was in no degree abated when, relinquishing his occupation as
a counsellor to the court at Charleston, he accepted a commission to
command a partisan corps of royalists in the upper country. He was, at
the juncture in which I have exhibited him to my reader, new in his
command, and had not yet "fleshed his maiden sword:" the day, however,
was near at hand when his prowess was to be put to the proof.

Such was the person into whose hands Arthur Butler had now fallen.

After the morning exercises of the camp were finished, and the men were
dismissed to prepare their first repast, the principal officers returned
to the colonel's head-quarters in the farm-house, where, it will be
remembered, Butler had been delivered by the escort that had conducted
him from Blackstock's. The prisoner had slept soundly during the whole
night; and now, as the breakfast hour drew nigh, he had scarcely awaked
and put on his clothes, before he heard an inquiry, made by some one
below, of the orderly on duty, whether the Whig officer was yet in a
condition to be visited; and, in the next moment, the noise of
footsteps, ascending the stair towards his chamber, prepared him to
expect the entrance of the person who had asked the question.

A British officer, in full uniform, of a graceful and easy carriage,
neat figure, and of a countenance that bespoke an intelligent and
cultivated mind, made his appearance at the door. He was apparently of
five or six and thirty years of age; a