as placidly as if his boyish form were safe beneath his mother’s roof.  One arm lay across his chest, clasping to his body the staff of a small cavalry flag, while the other stretched along his side, the hand resting unconsciously upon a holster-case of pistols.  As the glare of the neighboring fire played over his features it was easy to recognize Walter Peyton, guarding faithfully, even in his sleep, the banner which Jane Elliott had cut from her mother’s parlor fauteuil, and which had already become known to the enemy.  A rough log cabin stood a little way from the bivouac, before which two sentinels in the uniform of the Continental regulars were pacing up and down.  The gleam of the roaring lightwood fire flashed through the open seams between the logs, and heavy volumes of smoke rolled out of the clay chimney.  Just in front of the huge fire-place stood the tall, burly figure of Morgan, and near him were grouped, in earnest consultation, the manly figure of William Washington, the brave and knightly John Eager Howard of Maryland, McDowell, Triplett, Cunningham and other officers of the field and staff.  Determination not unmingled with gloom was visible upon the faces of all.  Every arrangement had been made for the probable fight of the morrow, and the council was about to disperse, when the silence of the night was broken by the call of a distant sentinel, taken up and repeated along the line.  Morgan instantly despatched an orderly, to the bivouac of the guard, and the party were soon cheered by the intelligence that a courier had just arrived who reported the near approach of Pickens with three hundred Carolina riflemen—­a timely and valuable addition to the little force of patriots.

The first gray pencilings of dawn were scarcely visible when the slumbering camp was roused by the rolling notes of the reveille from the drum of little Solly Barrett,[A] the drummer-boy of Howard’s Maryland Regulars.  Fully refreshed by a good night’s rest, the men prepared and ate their breakfasts with but little delay, and by seven o’clock the entire force was in line of battle, awaiting the approach of the enemy.

[Footnote A:  “Solly” resided for many years after the war at Easton, Maryland.  A good portrait of him is still there.]

Tarleton, flushed with the assurance of easy victory, had made a forced march during the night, and his command was much jaded when at eight o’clock he came in sight of Morgan’s outposts:  notwithstanding this, however, he determined, as was fully expected by those who knew his disposition and mode of warfare, to attack the American lines forthwith.  It must be left to the historian to tell how the battle raged with varying fortunes until Howard’s gallant Marylanders taught the British regulars that the despised provincials had learned the trick of the bayonet, and decided the issue of the day.  Up to this moment the cavalry, which had been posted in reserve behind a slight wooded eminence, had been chafing