The morning breeze heralding the sunrise was whispering to the leafless branches overhead, and there was nothing in all Dame Nature’s peaceful setting of the scene to hint at the impending war-clash.  Yet the war portent was abroad in all the peaceful morning, and my mood marched with the lad’s when I gave him his answer.

“Truly, I could tell you, Richard; and it is your due to know it from no other lips than mine.  Mayhap, a little later, when restitution can go hand in hand with repentance and confession—­”

“No, no;” he cut in quickly.  “Tell me now, Jack; your ‘little later’ may be all too late—­for me.  Does she love you?—­has she said she loves you?”

“Nay, dear lad; she despises me well and truly, and has never missed the chance of saying so.  Wait but a little longer and I pledge you on the honor of a gentleman you shall have her for your very own.  Will that content you?”

At my assurance his mood changed and in a twinkling he became the dauntless soldier who fights, not to die, but to win and live.

“With that word to keep me I shall not be killed to-day, I promise you, Jack; and that in spite of this damned queasiness that was showing me the burying trench.”  And then he added softly:  “God bless her!”

I could say amen to that most heartily; did it, and would have gone on to add a benison of my own, but at the moment there were sounds of galloping horses on our front, and presently three red-coated officers, one of them the redoubtable Colonel Tarleton himself, rode out to reconnoitre us most coolly.

I doubt if he would have been so rash had he known that Yeates and his borderers were concealed in easy pistol-shot; but the simultaneous cracking of a dozen rifles warned and sent the trio scuttling back to cover.

Dick swore piteously, with the snap-shot skirmishers for a target.  “The fumblers!” he raged. “’Twas the chance of a life-time, and they all missed like a lot of boys at their first deer stalking!”

“They will have another chance, and that speedily,” I ventured; and, truly, the chance did not tarry.

From our view point on the rising ground we could see the enemy forming under cover of the wood; and as we looked, the two pieces of cannon were thrust to the front to bellow out the signal for the assault.

’Twas a sight to stir the blood when the enemy broke cover into the opener wooding of the field to the tune of the roaring cannon, the volleyings of small arms and the defiant huzzaings of the men.  The sun was just peering over the summit of Thicketty Mountain, and his level rays fell first upon the charging line sweeping in like a tidal wave of red death to crumple our skirmishers before it.

“Lord!” says Richard; “if Yeates and the Indian come alive out of that—­”

But the outliers closed upon our first line in decent good order, firing as they could; and in less time than it takes to write it down the onsweeping wave of red was upon the Carolinians.  We looked to see the militia fire and run, home-guard fashion; but these men of Pickens’s were made of more soldierly stuff.  They took the fire of the assaulting line like veterans, giving ground only when it came to the bayonet push.