One grain of comfort I had in all these dreary weeks.  ’Twas whilst we were quartering in Charlotte, and I had chanced to fall upon the half-blood Scipio who had been left by Gilbert Stair to be the caretaker of the deserted town house.

As you will remember, ’twas he who had brought me the drugged tea, and the word I had from him made me hot with shame for the cruel imputation I had put upon my dear lady.  “Yas, sar; gib um sleep-drop to make buckra massa hol’ still twell we could tote ‘im froo de window an’ ‘roun’ de house an’ up de sta’r.  Soljah gyards watch um mighty close dat night; yes, sar!” And thus this nightmare thought of mine was turned into another thorn to prick me on the self-accusing side.  ’Twas her keen woman’s wit, and no cold-blooded plan to cheat the gallows, that made her give me the sleeping draft.  Having the object-lesson of my late surrender before her, she had no mind to let me mar the rescue by waking to forbid it.  And when I taxed her, ’twas natural pride that drove her to let me go on thinking the unworthy thought, if so I would.

I did penance for my disloyalty as a despairing lover might, and I do think it made me tenderer of Dick, whose bearing to me through all these tempestuous weeks was most nobly generous and forgiving.  I say forgiving because I was often but the curstest of companions, as you would guess.  For when I was not bent upon finding that wicket gate of death which would let me from the path of these two, I was in a wicked tertian of the mind whose chill was of despair, and whose fever was a hot desire to look once more into the eyes of my dear lady before the wicket gate should open for me.

’Twas this desire that finally drew me to her—­the desire and another thing which shall have mention in its place.  The new year was now come, and the Southern Army, as yet too weak to cope with the enemy, was cut into two wings of observation; one under General Greene himself at Cheraw Hill, the other and lesser in the knoll forests of the Broad with Daniel Morgan for its chief; both watching hawk-like the down-sitting of my Lord Cornwallis, who seemed to have taken root at Winnsborough.

As you will know, Washington’s light-horse was with Morgan; and we ate, drank and well-nigh slept in the saddle.  But for all our scoutings and outridings, and all Dan Morgan’s hearty cursings at the ill success of them, we could come by no sure inkling of Lord Cornwallis’s designs.  As I have said, the British commander seemed to have taken root and was now waiting to sprout and grow.

It was at this lack-knowledge crisis that I volunteered to go to the British camp at Winnsborough in my old quality of spy; did this and had my leave and orders before Dick learned of it.

Left to my own devices, I fear I should have slipped away without telling Jennifer.  But, as so many times before, fate intervened to drive me where I had not meant to go.  On the morning set for my departure I woke to find a letter pinned to the ground beside me with an Indian scalping-knife thrust through it.