“If you were as young as Major Joe Graham, and had been well crossed in love, I could understand you better, Captain.  But, jesting aside, there is a thing to do, and you are the man to do it.  Our spies are thick in Cornwallis’s camp, but what is needed is some master spirit who can plot as well as spy for us.  Major Ferguson moves as Cornwallis pulls the strings.  Could we know the major’s instructions and designs, we might cut him off, bring the Tory uprising to the ground, and so hearten the country beyond measure.  I say we might cut him off, though I know not where the men would come from to do it.”

“Well?” said I, when he paused.

“The preliminary is some better information than our spies can give us.  Now you have been an officer in the British service, and—­”

I smiled.  “Truly; and I have the honor, if you please to call it so, of his Lordship’s acquaintance.  Also, I have that of Colonel Tarleton and the members of his staff, the same having tried and condemned me as a spy at Appleby Hundred some few weeks before this chase I have told you of.”

His face fell.  “Then, of course, it is out of the question for you to show yourself in Cornwallis’s headquarters.”

I rose and buttoned my borrowed coat.

“On the contrary, Colonel Davie, I am more than ever at your service.  Let me have a cut of your venison and a feed for my horse, and I shall be at my Lord’s headquarters as soon as the nag can carry me there.”

XXXII

IN WHICH I AM BEDDED IN A GARRET

“Tis a very pretty hazard, Captain Ireton.  But can it be brought off successfully, think you?”

“As I have said, it hangs somewhat upon the safety of my portmanteau.  If that has come through unseized to Mr. Pettigrew at Charlotte, and I can lay hands on it, ’twill be half the battle.”

“You say you left it behind you at New Berne?”

“Yes; Mr. Carey was to forward it as he could.”

Colonel Davie had given me bite and sup, and I was ready to take the road.  My plan, such as it was, had been determined upon, and to the furthering of it, the colonel had written me a letter to a friend in the town who might shelter me for a night and make the needed inquiry for my belongings.  Also, he had given me another letter, of which more anon, and had pressed upon me a small purse of gold pieces—­a treasure rare enough in patriot hands in that impoverished time.

When all was done, two of my late captors were ordered to set me straight in the road; and some half-hour past noon I had shaken hands with the big fellow in homespun who had been so bent upon hanging me without benefit of clergy, had crossed the river, and was making the first looping in a detour which should bring me into Charlotte from the westward.

’Twas drawing on toward evening, and I had recrossed the river a mile or more below Appleby Hundred, when I began to meet the outposts of the British army.  I was promptly halted by the first of these; but my borrowed uniform and a ready word or two passed me within the lines as a courier riding post to headquarters from Major Ferguson in the west.