--may present to your mind."

"Speak it," said Butler, vehemently; "speak out the base thought that is
rising to your lip, if you dare. Prisoner as I am, I will avenge the
insult on the spot with the certainty of loss of life. The alternative
you suggest, is to dishonor me and all who are dear to me by the foul
opprobrium of treason to my country. You would have me, I suppose,
renounce the cause to which I have dedicated my life, and take shelter
with the recreants that have crowded under the banner of St. George?"

"Hold! remember, sir, that you are a prisoner," said St. Jermyn, with
great coolness; and then after a pause, he added with a sigh: "I will
not wound, by further converse, the exaggerated and delusive sense of
honor which is too fatally predominant in your breast, and, as I have
found it, in the breasts of many of your misguided countrymen. I came to
serve you, not to excite your feelings; and I will now, even in your
displeasure, serve you as far as the occasion may afford me means: I
pray you, call on me without reserve. For the present, believe me, in
pain and sorrow I take my leave."

With these words, the officer retired.

Butler paced to and fro through his narrow chamber for some minutes, as
his mind revolved the extraordinary and unexpected disclosures which had
been made to him in this short visit. A thousand conjectures rose into
his thoughts as to the nature of the supposed charges that were to be
brought against him. He minutely retraced all the incidents of his late
adventures, to ascertain how it was possible to found upon them an
accusation of violated faith, or to pervert them into an imputation of
treason against the present doubtful and disputed authority of the
self-styled conquerors of Carolina. If his attempt to join Clarke was
treason, it could be no less treason in the followers of Gates to array
themselves against the royal army; and, that every prisoner hereafter
taken in battle was to be deemed a traitor to the contested power of
Cornwallis, seemed to be a pretension too absurd for the most inveterate
partisans to assert. There was nothing in this review of his actions
that the most ingenious malice could pervert into an offence punishable
by the laws of war, by other rigor than such as might be inflicted upon
an ordinary prisoner taken in arms. Still, there were unhappy doubts of
some secret treachery that rose to his reflections: the perfidy of
Adair, manifestly the effect of a