In the South the distressful situation we had left behind us on that August Sunday following the disastrous battle of Camden was but little changed.  General Gates, with the scantiest following, had hastened first to Salisbury and later to Hillsborough, and had since been busy striving to reassemble his scattered forces.

A few military partizans, like my host, had kept the field, doing what the few might against the many to retard my Lord Cornwallis’s northward march; and a week earlier the colonel with his handful of mounted riflemen had dared to oppose his entry into Charlotte.

“’Twas no more than a hint to his Lordship that we were not afraid of him,” said my doughty colonel.  “You know the town, I take it?”

“Very well, indeed.”

“Well, we had harassed him all the way from Blair’s Mill, and ’twas midnight when we reached Charlotte.  There we determined to make a stand and give him a taste of our mettle.  We dismounted, took post behind the stone wall of the court house green and under cover of the fences along the road.”

“Good! an ambush,” said I.

“Hardly that, since they were looking to have resistance.  Tarleton was sick, and Major Hanger commanded the British van.  He charged, and we peppered them smartly.  They tried it again, and this time their infantry outflanked us.  We abandoned the court house and formed again in the eastern edge of the town; and now, bless you! ’twas my Lord Charles himself who had to ride forward and flout at his men for their want of enterprise.”

“But you could never hope to hold on against such odds!” I exclaimed.

“Oh, no; but we held them for a third charge, and beat them back, too.  Then they brought up two more regiments and we mounted and got off in tolerably good order, losing only six men killed.  But Colonel Francis Locke was one of these; and my brave Joe Graham was all but cut to pieces—­a sore blow to us just now.”

The colonel sighed and a silence fell upon us.  ’Twas I who broke it to say:  “Then we are still playing a losing hand in the South, as I take it?”

“’Tis worse than that.  As the game stands we have played all our trumps and have not so much as a long suit left.  Cornwallis will go on as he pleases and overrun the state, and the militia will never stand to front him again under Horatio Gates.  Worse still, Ferguson is off to the westward, embodying the Tories by the hundred, and we shall have burnings and hangings and harryings to the king’s taste.”

I nursed my knee a moment and then said:  “What may one man do to help, Colonel Davie?”

He looked up quickly.  “Much, if you are that man, and you do not value your life too highly, Captain Ireton.”

“You may leave that out of the question,” said I.  “I shall count it the happiest moment of my life when I shall have done something worth their killing me for.”

Again he gave me that curious look I had noted before.  Then he laughed.