“We must learn by hook or crook who is to be sent against Dan Morgan, and when.”

“That should be easy—­if the use of it afterward be not choked out of us at a rope’s end.”

“We can divide the rope’s-end chance of failure by two.  We may work together as the opportunity offers, but once within the lines we must pass as strangers to each other, or at most as chance acquaintances of the road.”

“Good,” said he; and then his jaw dropped.  “But what if one of us be taken?  Never ask me to stand by stranger-wise and see you hanged, Jack!”

“I shall both ask it and promise to do the same by you.  Your hand on it before we go a step farther, if you please.”

“’Tis out of all reason,” he demurred.

“’Tis the only reasonable course.  Bethink you, this is no knight-errant venture; we are two of Dan Morgan’s soldiers bent upon doing a thing most needful for the welfare of the country and its cause.  ’Tis a duty higher than any obligation friendship lays on Richard Jennifer or John Ireton.”

At this he yielded the point, though I could see that the proposal jumped little with the promptings of his generous heart.

“’Tis a scurvy trap you have set for me,” he grumbled.  “The risk is chiefly yours, and you know it.  You are known to Lord Cornwallis, and to God knows how many more of them, and belike—­”

The interruption came in the shape of a troop of redcoat horsemen galloping in the road to meet us, and we were shortly surrounded and put sharply to the question.  We answered each for himself.  Dick was a loyalist from Yorkville way, eager to be set in arms against the bandit Daniel Morgan.  I was a refugee from “hornets’-nest” Mecklenburg, also bent upon revenge.

The troop officer passed us on, something doubting, as I suspected.  But we were riding in the right direction, and he was unwilling to clog himself with a pair of plain country gentlemen held in leash as prisoners.

A few miles farther down the road the same brace of lies got us safely through the loosely drawn vedette line, and by evening we were in sight of our goal.

Viewing it from the rising ground of approach, Winnsborough appeared less as a town than as a partly fortified camp.  The few houses of the village were lost in the field of tents, huts and troop shelters, and measuring by the spread of these, it would seem that my Lord Cornwallis’s army had been considerably augmented since I had last seen it in Charlotte.  I spoke of this, but Dick was intent upon the business of the moment.

“Aye; there are enough of them, God knows.  But tell me, Jack—­I’m new to this game—­what’s to do first when we are among them?”

I laughed at him.  “You are my troop commander, Captain Jennifer.  ’Tis for you to make the dispositions.”

“Have your joke and be hanged to you.  There are no captains here.”

“If you leave it to me, we shall ride boldly to the tavern, put up as travelers, and listen to the gossips, each for himself,” I replied; and this is what we did.