I need not drag you back and forth with me on the search I made to find Lord Cornwallis again.  ’Tis enough to say that after missing him here and there, I ran him to earth at the court house, where, it was told me, my Lord was sitting in council with his staff officers.

Thinking it worse than useless to try to force my way into the council chamber, I waited in the raff of soldiery without, cursing the delay which gave my despairing resolution time to cool.  When I had closed the door of my dear lady’s chamber behind me I was resolved to fling myself upon that fate which needed but a word from me to make my calling and election to a gibbet swift and sure.  Had I found my Lord Cornwallis in his bed-room the word would have been spoken; but now the iron of resolution cooled in spite of me.

’Twas not that I was less willing to pay the price of expiation; that must be done in any case.  But I had seen the enemy, and all the soldier in me rebelled at the thought of dying like a noosed bullock in the shambles.  Could I but strike that one good blow.

The old court house of our greater Mecklenburg was such as some of you may remember; a stout wooden building raised upon brick pillars to leave a story underneath.  In the time of the British occupation this lower story served as a market house, and the public entrance to the court room above was reached by steps on the outside.  In my boyhood days this outer stair was the only one; but now in wandering aimlessly through the market-place beneath I found another flight in a corner; the “jury stair,” they called it, since it provided the means of egress from the jury box above.

The sight of this inner stair set me plotting.  Could I make use of it to come unseen into the council chamber of Lord Cornwallis and his officers?

The market-place was well thronged with venders and soldier buyers; the patriotic Mecklenburgers were not averse to the turning of an honest penny upon the needs of their oppressors, as it seemed.  I watched my chance, and when there were no prying eyes to mark it, made the dash up the steps.

Happily for the success of the adventure there was an angle in the narrow stair to hide me whilst I lifted the trap door in the court-room floor a scant half-inch and got my bearings.  As I had hoped, the trap opened behind the jury box, and I was able to raise it cautiously and so to draw myself up into the room above, unseen and unheard.

A peep around the corner of the high jury stalls showed me my Lord and his suite gathered about the lawyers’ table in front of the bar.  Of the staff I recognized only Stedman, the commissary-general; Tarleton, looking something the worse for his late illness; Major Hanger, his second in command, and the young Irishman, Lord Rawdon.

At the moment of my espial, Cornwallis was speaking, and I drew back to listen, well enough content to be in earshot.  For if my good angel had timed my coming I could not have arrived at a more opportune moment.