the British; and it was obvious that the ruthless savage would take immediate advantage of the departure of a large body of fighting men, to fall upon the enfeebled frontier.  Shelby, on his part, insisted that it was the duty of Colonel Bledsoe, whose family, relatives, and defenceless neighbors looked to him for protection, to stay with the troops at home for the purpose of repelling the expected Indian assault.  For himself, he urged, he had no family to guard, or who might mourn his loss, and it was better that he should advance with the troops to join McDowell.  No one could tell where might be the post of danger and honor, at home or on the other side of the mountain.  The arguments he used no doubt corresponded with his friend’s own convictions, his sense of duty to his family, and of true regard to the welfare of his country; and the deliberation resulted in his relinquishment of the command to his junior officer.  It was thus that the conscientious, though not ambitious, patriot lost the honor of commanding in one of the most distinguished actions of the Revolutionary War.

Colonel Shelby took the command of those gallant mountaineers who encountered the forces of Ferguson at King’s Mountain on the 7th October, 1780.  Three days after that splendid victory, Colonel Bledsoe received from him an official dispatch giving an account of the battle.  The daughter of Colonel Bledsoe well remembers having heard this dispatch read by her father, though it has probably long since shared the fate of other valuable family papers.

When the hero of King’s Mountain, wearing the victor’s wreath, returned to his friends, he found that his betrothed had departed with her father for Kentucky, leaving for him no request to follow.  Sarah, the above-mentioned daughter of Colonel Bledsoe, often rallied the young officer, who spent considerable time at her father’s, upon this cruel desertion.  He would reply by expressing much indignation at the treatment he had received at the hands of the fair coquette, and protesting that he would not follow her to Kentucky, nor ask her of her father; he would wait for little Sarah Bledsoe, a far prettier bird, he would aver, than the one that had flown away.  The maiden, then some twelve or thirteen years of age, would laughingly return his bantering by saying he “had better wait, indeed, and see if he could win Miss Bledsoe who could not win Miss Hart.”  The arch damsel was not wholly in jest, for a youthful kinsman of the colonel—­David Shelby, a lad of seventeen or eighteen, who had fought by his side at King’s Mountain—­had already gained her youthful affections.  She remained true to this early love, though her lover was only a private soldier.  And it may be well to record that, the gallant colonel who thus threatened infidelity to his, did actually, notwithstanding his protestations, go to Kentucky the following year, and was married to Miss Susan Hart, who made him a faithful and excellent wife.