“’Tis the hour for parade; you will find them at the camp,” he replied.  And then, out of the honest English heart of him:  “Have you made your peace, Captain?  Do you need a friend to go with you?”

I said I had been granted a hearing by Lord Cornwallis but a little while before; that by my Lord’s appointment I was now a sort of honorary aide-de-camp.

“Good!” said the lieutenant, gripping my hand in a way to make me wince for the lie-in-effect hidden in the simple statement of fact.  Then he roared at the soldier standing guard at the house door below:  “A mount for Captain Ireton—­and be swift about it!”

He held me in talk till the horse was fetched, happily doing most of the talking himself, and when I was in the saddle gave me a hearty God-speed.  Being so sick with self-despisings, I fear I made but a poor return for all this good comradeship; but at the time I could think of nothing but the hell that flamed within me, and of how I could soonest quench the fires of it.

The town, which I had not seen since early summer, was but little changed by the British occupation, save in the livening of it by the near-at-hand camp of an armed host.  Being but a halt-point en route in the northward march, it was not fortified; indeed, for the matter of that, the camp proper was a little way without the town, as I have said.

I rode slowly across the common, skirting the commissary’s quarters and making mental notes of all I saw; this from soldier habit solely, for at the time I had little thought of living on to make a spy’s use of them.  Arrived at the parade ground, I found my Lord galloping through the lines on inspection, and so I must draw rein in the background and wait my opportunity.

The pause gave space for some eye-sweep of the scene, and all the soldier blood in me was stirred by the sight, the first I had had in many a day, of a well-ordered army, fit, disciplined, machine-drilled to move like the parts of a wondrous mechanism.

At the back of Lord Cornwallis and his galloping suite, Tarleton’s famous light-horse legion was drawn up; and fronting it was the infantry, rank on rank, the glittering bayonets slanting in the October sunlight as the regiments moved into place, or standing in rigid groves of steel at the command to halt and port arms.

What was there in all our poor raw land to stand against this well-trained host, armed—­as we were not—­with the deadly bayonet, and moving as one man at the word of command?  Not the bravest home guard or militia troop, I thought; and this seeing of what he had had to front on the field of Camden made me think less scornfully of Horatio Gates.

Riding presently around the field to be the nearer to the general when my time should come, I missed the mark completely.  It so chanced that as the parade was ended my Lord and his suite were at the extreme right; and when the regiments broke ranks I was forced to skirt the entire camp to come into the road.  By this time those I sought were gone into the town, so I must needs turn about and follow, with the thing I had to say still unspoken.