“Ye’ve had a nearhand escape this time, sir,” he said, after a longish pause.

“One more or less of a good many since we were last met together in this room, Mr. Stair,” I would say.

He muttered something to himself about the devil taking precious good care of his own; and I laughed.

“That is as it may be; but my being here this second time a pensioner on your bounty is by no good will of mine, I do assure you, sir.”

He sat nodding at me as if I had said a thing to be most heartily agreed to.  But his spoken word belied the nods.

“The ways of Providence are inscrutable—­something inscrutable, Captain Ireton.  I make no doubt ye are sufficiently thankfu’ for all your mercies.”

“Why, as to that, there may be two ways of looking at it.  As a soldier, I may justly repine at a fate which ties me here when I should be in the field.”

“Well said, sir; brawly said; ’tis the part of a good soldier to be ay wanting to be in the thick o’ the fighting.  But now that ye’re a man of substance, Captain Ireton, ye will be owing other debts to our country than the one ye can pay with a hantle o’ steel.”

“‘Our country,’ did you say, Mr. Stair?” I asked, feigning a surprise which no one knowing him could feel in very truth.

“And what for no?  ’Tis the birthland of some—­yourself, for example, and the leal land of adoption for others—­your humble servant, to wit.  I’ve taken the solemn oath of allegiance to the Congress, I’d have ye to know.”

At this I must needs laugh outright.

“Have you taken it one more time than you have forsworn it, Mr. Stair?”

“Laugh and ye will,” he said, quite placably; “ye shall never laugh the peetriotism out o’ me.  ’Tis little enough an old man can do, but the precious cause o’ liberty will never have to ask that little twice, Captain Ireton.”

Since he would ever be on the winning side, this foreshadowed good tidings, indeed.  So I would ask him straight what news there was.

“Have they not told ye?  ’Tis braw news,” he chuckled.  “Whilst ye were on your back, General Greene led Lord Cornwallis a fine dance all across the prov—­the state, I mean, crooking his finger at him and saying, ’Come on, ye led-captain of a tyrant king, and when I’m ready I’ll turn and rend ye.’  And by the same token, that is juist what he did the other day at Guilford Court House.”

“A victory?” I would ask.

“Well, not precisely that, maybe; they’re calling it a drawn battle.  But I’m thinking ’tis Lord Cornwallis that’s drawn.  He’s off to Wilmington, they say, and I’m fain to hope we’ve seen the last o’ him and his reaving redcoats in these parts.”

His words set me in a muse.  I could never make out what he would be at, telling me all this.  But he had an object, well-defined, and presently it showed its head.

“Ye’re the laird o’ the manor, now, Captain Ireton, with none to gainsay ye,” he went on.  “So I’ve come to give ye an account o’ my stewardship.  I made no doubt, all along, ye’d come back to your own when ye’d had your fling wi’ the Old Worldies, and so I’ve kept tab o’ the poor bit land for ye.”