Then it was that my poor lad, famine-mad and frenzied, rose up to curse me bitterly.

“Now may all the devils in hell drag you down to everlasting torments, John Ireton, for your cold-hearted caution that made us lose when we had good hope to win!” he cried.  “One little hour I begged for, and that hour had fought her battle and set her free.  But now—­”

He broke off in the midst, choking with what miserable despair I knew, and shared as well; and throwing himself down in the wet grass, he would eke out the bitter words with such ravings and sobbings as bubble up in sheer abandonment of rage and misery.

XXIII

HOW WE KEPT THE FEAST OF BITTER HERBS

You may be sure that Richard Jennifer’s bitter reproachings came home to me in sharpest fashion, the more since now I saw how we had lost our chance by neglecting the commonest precautions.  Having determined to attack, the merest novice of a general would have moved his forces to the nearest point; would have had his scouts search out the ford beforehand; and, above all, would never have delayed the blow beyond the earliest moment of the enemy’s unwatchfulness.

So now, when all was lost, I fell to kneading out this sodden dough of afterwit with Ephraim Yeates; but when I sought to carry off the blame as mine by right, the old borderer would not give me leave.

“Fair and easy, Cap’n John; fair and easy,” he protested.  “Let’s give that old sarpent, which is the devil and Satan, his dues.  Ez I allow, there was the whole enduring passel of us to ricollact all them things.  To be sure, we had our warnings, mistrusting all along that this here dad-blame’ hoss-captain had his finger in the pie.  But, lawzee! we had ne’er a man o’ God ’mongst us to rise up and prophesy what was a-going to happen if we didn’t get up and scratch gravel immejitly, if not sooner; though I won’t deny that Cap’n Dick did try his hand that-away.”

“True; and I would now we had listened to him,” said I, gloomily enough.  “We have lost our chance, and God knows if we shall ever have another.  Falconnet must have half a hundred men, red and white, in the powder train; and by this time he has learned from the Indian who reconnoitered us on the mountain that we are within striking distance.  With the enemy forewarned, as he is, we might as well try to cut the women out of my Lord Cornwallis’s headquarters.”

The old man chuckled his dry little laugh, though what food for merriment he could find in the hopeless prospect was more than I could understand.

“Ho! ho!  Cap’n John; I reckon ez how ye’re a-taking that word from yonder down-hearted boy of our’n.  Wait a spell till ye’re ez old ez I be; then you’ll never say die till ye’re plumb dead.”

Now, truly, though I was dismally disheartened, I could reassure him on the point of perseverance.  ’Tis an Ireton failing to lose heart and hope when the skies are dark; but this is counterbalanced in some of us by a certain quality of unreasoning persistence which will go on running long after the race is well lost.  My father had this stubborn virtue to the full; and so had that old Ironside Ireton from whom we are descended.