There was a still worse terror, of which, fortunately, the Merediths saw nothing.  Large numbers of the negroes took advantage of the incursion, and indeed were encouraged by the cavalry, to escape from slavery by following in the rear of the column; and as the white men were either with the Virginia militia, or were in hiding away from the houses, the women were powerless to prevent the blacks from plundering, or from any other excess it pleased them to commit.  The Old Dominion, the last State of the thirteen to be swept over by the foe, was harried as the Jerseys had been, but by troops made less merciful by many a fierce conflict, and by its own servitors, debased by slavery to but one degree above the brute.  Only with death did the people forget the enormities of those few months, when Cornwallis’s army cut a double swath from tide water almost to the mountains, and Tarleton’s and Simcoe’s cavalry rode whither they pleased; and the hatred of the British and the fear of their own slaves outlasted even the passing away of the generation which had suffered.

It was on the afternoon of the following day that the detachment effected a juncture with the main army, and so soon as Major Hennion had reported, Lord Cornwallis, who was quartered at Elk Hill, an estate of Jefferson’s, sent word that he wished to see Mr. Meredith at once, and extended an invitation to them all to share the house.  He questioned the squire for nearly an hour as to the whereabouts of the Convention prisoners, the condition of the State, and the feeling of the people.

“All you tell me tallies with such information as I have procured elsewhere,” he ended; “and had I but a free hand I make certain I could destroy Lafayette and completely subjugate the State in one campaign.”

“Surely, my Lord, you could not better serve the king.  Virginia has been the great hot-bed of sedition, and if she were once smothered, the fire would quickly die out.”

“Almost the very words I writ to Sir Henry, but he declares it out of the question to leave me the troops with which to effect it.  As you no doubt are aware, a French force has been landed at Rhode Island, and is even now on its march to join Mr. Washington; and, by a fortunate interception of some of his despatches to Congress, we have full information that the united force intend an attack on New York.  So I am ordered to fall down to a good defensive post on the Chesapeake and to send a material part of my army to his aid.”

When finally the interview was ended, and Mr. Meredith asked one of the aides to take him to his room, it was explained that Mrs. Meredith and her daughter had been put in one and that he was to have a share of another.

“You ’d have had the floor or a tent, sir,” his guide told him, as he threw open the door, “but for Lord Clowes saying he’d take you in.”

Surely enough, it was the commissary who warmly grasped the squire’s hand as he entered, and who cried, “Welcome to ye, friend Meredith!  I heard of your strange arrival from nowhere, and glad I was to be assured ye were still in the flesh and once more among friends.”