(head of the middle finger on the hand-map).  The reader has, in just such way, marched a knight across the chess-board to escort back a necessary pawn, to make desperate fight against some Cornwallis of a castle.  Cornwallis passed through Hanover Court-House to Chesterfield Court-House, “stealing tobacco,” in the whole to the amount of two thousand hogsheads,—­then, satisfying himself that he could not prevent the junction of the knight and pawn, and that Hunter’s iron-works, at Fredericksburg, which he had threatened, were not of so much import as the stores in the western part of the country, he turned south and west again, and awaited Lafayette’s movements, threatening Albemarle County, just west of where we are beginning to get acquainted with Gordonsville,—­a place then uncreated.  Cornwallis was all along unwilling to engage in extensive operations till he should hear from Sir Henry Clinton, whom he knew he had insulted and offended.  His detachments of horse had been sent, meanwhile, up the line of James River above Richmond.  Tarleton penetrated as far as Charlottesville, marching seventy miles in twenty-four hours, hoping to take the Legislature by surprise.  The story is, that he would have succeeded, but for his eagerness to get his breakfast on the last day.  He had waited long for it,—­and finally asked, in some heat, where it was.  Dr. Walker, whose guest he had made himself, replied, that Tarleton’s soldiers had already taken two of the breakfasts which had been prepared for him that morning, and suggested a guard for the security of the third.

While the third breakfast was being cooked, the legislators escaped.  Jefferson was among them.  Tarleton took seven, however, who told him that the country was tired of the war,—­and that, if no treaty for a loan were made with France that summer, Congress would negotiate with England before winter.  They were eighty-one years in advance of their time!  Tarleton returned down the Rivanna River to its junction with the James, where he assisted Simcoe in driving out Baron Steuben, who with a few militia was trying to protect some arms there.  Poor Steuben had but few to protect, nothing to protect them with, and lost them all.  At this point the cavalry rejoined the main army under Cornwallis.

In all these movements of both parties, the character of the “laboring people,” of which, as I have said, President Tyler spoke to me, was illustrated.  These people swarmed to Cornwallis with information, with horses and supplies.  They did not swell the ranks of the Virginia militia.  “He took away thirty thousand of our slaves,” says Mr. Jefferson.  “Many of your negroes joined the enemy,” says Lafayette to Washington; “the news did not trouble me much, for that sort of interests touch me very little.”  This is in the letter where he tells the General how his agent, Lund Washington, had been disgracefully treating with the invaders.  This disposition of the “laboring people,”