Since writing the foregoing I have your courier, and his despatches.  Lieutenant-colonel Tarleton, with four hundred of the legion, will take the road for you to-night.  If battle is forced upon you, make a stand and hold the enemy in check till reinforcements come.

    Cornwallis.

The old man sanded the wet penstrokes and bade me say if it would serve.  ’Twas a most beautiful forgery.  My Lord’s crabbed handwriting was copied to a nicety, and of the two signatures I doubt if the earl himself could have told which was his own; ’twas the same circle “C,” the same printing “r,” the same heavy precision throughout.

“Capital!” said I.  “Now, if the lightning would but strike these pursuers of mine, we should have the Scotsman at bay in a hand’s turn.”

“How?” said the patriarch; “are you followed?”

I told him I was; told him of my Lord’s plot within a plot—­that three light-horse riders, one of them a lieutenant bearing duplicate despatches, had been hard upon my heels all the way from Charlotte.

At this the old warhorse—­I learned afterward that he had fought through the French and Indian war—­wagged his beard and his eye flashed.

“We must stop them,” he said.  “Three of them, do you say?”

“Three white men and an Indian trailer.”

“Ha!  If it were not for the little maid....  Let me think.”

He fell to pacing up and down before the fire on the hearth, and I took the small one on my knee to let her chatter to me.  ’Twas five full minutes before my ancient gave me the worth of his cogitations, but when he did speak it was much to the purpose.

“These marplot rear-guards of yours will spoil it all if they come to Ferguson’s camp either before or after you.  Do they know the major’s present whereabouts?”

“No more than I did an hour ago.  As I take it, they are depending on me to show them the way.”

“Well, then; dead men tell no tales.”

“But, my good friend, you forget there are four of them and only two of us!  We should stand little chance with them in fair fight.”

Again the old man’s eyes snapped and glowed as if pent-fires were behind them.

“Was it fair fight when Tarleton’s men rode in upon Tom Sumter’s rest camp at Fishing Creek and cut down this little maid’s father whilst he was naked and bathing in the stream?  Was it fair fight when King George’s Indian devils came down in the dead of night upon our defenseless house at Northby?  Never talk to me of fairness, sir, whilst all this bloody tyranny is afoot!”

I thought upon it for a little space.  ’Twas none so easy to decide.  On one hand, stern loyalty to the cause I had espoused passed instant sentence on these four men whose lives stood in the way; on the other, common humanity cried out and called it murder.

Never smile, my dears, and hint that I had found me a new heart of mercy since that ambush-killing of the three Cherokee peace-men in the lone valley of the western mountains.  We did but give the savages a dole out of their own store of cruel cunning and ferocity.  But as for these my trackers, three of them, at least, were soldiers and men of my own race.  I could not do it.