So, having discussed the perils of the immediate future, they had done all it was in their power to do to prepare for them.  Late that evening the General and his son and four other gentlemen arrived at The Rose and Garter.  Certain of them had spent the afternoon in the neighborhood shooting birds and rabbits.

Solomon got Jack to bed early and sat for a time in their room tinkering with the pistols.  When the locks were working “right,” as he put it, he polished their grips and barrels.

“Now I reckon they’ll speak out when ye pull the trigger,” he said to Jack.  “An’ yer eyesight ‘ll skate erlong easy on the top o’ them bar’ls.”

“It’s a miserable kind of business,” said the young man, who was lying in bed and looking at his friend.  “We Americans have a rather hard time of it, I say.  Life is a fight from beginning to end.  We have had to fight with the wilderness for our land and with the Indians and the French for our lives, and now the British come along and tell us what we must and mustn’t do and burn up our houses.”

“An’ spit on us an’ talk as if we was a lot o’ boar pigs,” said Solomon.  “But ol’ Jeff tol’ me ‘twere the King an’ his crowd that was makin’ all the trouble.”

“Well, the King and his army can make us trouble enough,” Jack answered.  “It’s as necessary for an American to know how to fight as to know how to walk.”

“Now ye stop worryin’ an’ go to sleep ’er I’ll take ye crost my knee,” said Solomon.  “They ain’t goin’ to be no great damage done, not if ye do as I tell ye.  I’ve been an’ looked the ground over an’ if we have to leg it, I know which way to go.”

Solomon had heard from Preston that evening that the Lieutenant was the best pistol shot in his regiment, but he kept the gossip to himself, knowing it would not improve the aim of his young friend.  But Solomon was made uneasy by this report.

“My boy kin throw a bullet straight as a plumb line an’ quick as lightnin’,” he had said to Preston.  “It’s as nat’ral fer him as drawin’ his breath.  That ere chap may git bored ’fore he has time to pull.  I ain’t much skeered.”

Jack was nervous, although not from fear.  His estimate of the value of human life had been increased by his affection for Margaret.  When Solomon had gone to bed and the lights were blown, the young man felt every side of his predicament to see if there were any peaceable way out of it.  For hours he labored with this hopeless task, until he fell into a troubled sleep, in which he saw great battalions marching toward each other.  On one side, the figures of himself and Solomon were repeated thousands of times, and on the other was a host of Lionel Clarkes.

The words came to his ear:  “My son, we’re goin’ to fight the first battle o’ the war.”

Jack awoke suddenly and opened his eyes.  The candle was lighted.  Solomon was leaning over him.  He was drawing on his trousers.