A young British officer was sent from Georgetown to treat with Marion for an exchange of prisoners.  The Swamp-Fox fully approved of the interview, being ready enough to rid himself of his captives, who were a burden on his hands.  But he was too shrewd to lay bare the ways that led to his camp.  The officer was blindfolded, and led by devious paths through canebrake, thicket, and forest to the hidden camp.  On the removal of the bandage from his eyes he looked about him with admiration and surprise.  He found himself in a scene worthy of Robin Hood’s woodland band.  Above him spread the boughs of magnificent trees, laden with drooping moss, and hardly letting a ray of sunlight through their crowding foliage.  Around him rose their massive trunks, like the columns of some vast cathedral.  On the grassy or moss-clad ground sat or lay groups of hardy-looking men, no two of them dressed alike, and with none of the neat appearance of uniformed soldiers.  More remote were their horses, cropping the short herbage in equine contentment.  It looked like a camp of forest outlaws, jovial tenants of the merry greenwood.

The surprise of the officer was not lessened when his eyes fell on Marion, whom he had never seen before.  It may be that he expected to gaze on a burly giant.  As it was, he could scarcely believe that this diminutive, quiet-looking man, and this handful of ill-dressed and lounging followers, were the celebrated band who had thrown the whole British power in the South into alarm.

Marion addressed him, and a conference ensued in which their business was quickly arranged to their mutual satisfaction.

“And now, my dear sir,” said Marion, “I should be glad to have you dine with me.  You have fasted during your journey, and will be the better for a woodland repast.”

“With pleasure,” replied the officer.  “It will be a new and pleasant experience.”

He looked around him.  Where was the dining-room? where, at least, the table, on which their mid-day repast was to be spread?  Where were the dishes and the other paraphernalia which civilization demands as the essentials of a modern dinner?—­Where?  His eyes found no answer to this mental question.  Marion looked at him with a smile.

“We dine here in simple style, captain,” he remarked.  “Pray be seated.”

He took his seat on a mossy log, and pointed to an opposite one for the officer.  A minute or two afterwards the camp purveyor made his appearance, bearing a large piece of bark, on which smoked some roasted sweet potatoes.  They came from a fire of brushwood blazing at a distance.

“Help yourself, captain,” said Marion, taking a swollen and brown-coated potato from the impromptu platter, breaking it in half, and beginning to eat with a forest appetite.

The officer looked at the viands and at his host with eyes of wonder.

“Surely, general,” he exclaimed, “this cannot be your ordinary fare?”