To the man’s “Halt!  Who goes there?” I gave the word “Friends,” salving my conscience for the needful lie as I might.

“Advance, friends, and give the countersign.”

I confessed my ignorance of the night-word, saying that we were a paroled prisoner and a bearer of despatches, and asking that we be taken to Major Ferguson’s headquarters.  There was some little cautious demurring on the part of the sentry, but finally he passed the word for the guard-captain and we were escorted to the tent of the field commander.

I marked the encampment as I could in passing through it.  The little army was three-fourths made up of Tory militia; and there was drinking and song-singing and a plentiful lack of discipline around the camp-fires of these auxiliaries.  But a different air was abroad in the camp of the regulars; you would see a soldierly alertness on the part of the men, and there was no roistering in that quarter.

Major Ferguson’s tent was on a hillock some distance back from the stream, and thither we were conducted; we, I say, meaning Tybee and myself, for Uncanoola had disappeared like a whiff of smoke at our challenging on the sentry line.

Late as it was, the major was up and hard at work.  His tent table, transformed for the time into a mechanic’s work-bench, was littered with gun-barrels and tools and screws and odd-shaped pieces of mechanism—­the disjointed parts of that breech-loading musket of which the ingenious Scotchman was the inventor.

Being deep in the creative trance when we came upon him, the major gave us but an absent-minded greeting, listening with the outward ear only when Tybee reported his mission, and his capture and parole.

“From my Lord, ye say?  I hope ye left him well,” was all the answer the Lieutenant got, the inventor fitting away at his gun-puzzle the while.

Tybee made proper rejoinder and stood aside to give me room.  I drew a sealed inclosure from my pocket and laid it on the work-bench table.

“I also have the honor to come from my Lord Cornwallis, bringing despatches”—­so far I got in my cut-and-dried speech, and then my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth and I could no more finish the sentence than could a man suddenly nipped in a vise.  Instead of the carefully doctored original, I had given the major the duplicate despatch taken from Tybee.

Ah, my dears, that was a moment for swift thought and still swifter action; and ’tis the Ireton genius to be slow and sure and no wise “gleg at the uptak’,” as a Scot would say.  Yet for this once my good angel gave me a prompting and the wit to use it.  In that clock-tick of benumbing despair when the success of the hazardous venture, and much more that I wist not of, hung suspended by a hair over the abyss of failure, I minded me of a boyish trick wherewith I used to fright the timid blacks in the old days at Appleby Hundred.  So whilst the major was reaching for the packet—­nay, when he had it in his hand—­I started back with a warning cry, giving that imitation of the ominous skir-r-r of a rattlesnake which had more than once got me a cuffing from my father.