and the challenge a wicked folly. It was a bitter and remorseful
recollection as his age came on, and its details were edifying in no
sense. Hence, as Peninnah Penelope Anne knew naught of the story she
could not tell it, and he escaped the distasteful pose of a merciless
duelist.

She gave his name with much pride, noting the respect with which the
officers heard it. She accounted for the incongruities of his presence
here as the result of a trip from England to the province, where, as she
said, "he was detained by the snare of matrimony." It was his own
phrase, for as a snare he regarded the holy estate; but the younger of
the officers were pleased to find it funny, and ventured to laugh;
whereat she grew red and silent, and they perforce became grave again
that they might hear of the French. Here she was vague and discursive,
and prone to detail at great length the feud between the Blue Lick
Stationers and the "cow-drivers" on the Keowee, evidently hoping that it
might lie within the latitude of the commandant's military authority to
take some order with the herder gentry,--for which they would not have
thanked her in the least! But the officers of the garrison of Fort
Prince George had thought for naught but the French, and now and again
conferred dubiously together on the unsatisfactory points of her
evidence.

"Do you suppose she really knows anything about it?" the commandant said
aside to one of his advisers.

Suddenly, however, her grandfather's hearing improved, and they were
able to elicit from him the reports which he had had at second hand from
the cow-drivers themselves, in retailing which he honestly conceived
that he was repeating genuine news, never dreaming that the information
had blossomed forth from his own mission.

While less circumstantial and satisfactory than the commandant could
have wished, the details were too significant and serious of import to
be ignored, and therefore he acted upon his information as far as it was
developed.

He ordered out a scouting party of ten men, and, that he might utilize
Blue Lick Station as an outpost in some sort where they might find
refuge and aid, he dispatched to the settlement a present of gunpowder
to serve in the defense of the station, in case of attack by the French,
and two of the small coehorns of that day, each of which could be
carried between two men, to assist the little piece already at the
station. In return for the prospective courtesy a