CHAPTER SECOND.
"The wagons have all forded the brook as it flows, and then the rear guard stays—
To pick the purple grapes that are hanging from the boughs."
—Edward Everett Hale.
While our heroine is riding along in the dewy morn of the day, and at the same time enjoying the beauties of nature and no doubt with her lithe young body leaning against the Captain, causing his heart to beat a double quick, we will go on with our narrative.
Captain John Freeman was a native Georgian, a Revolutionary soldier, he was present at the siege of Charlestown and Savannah, a participant in the battles of Cowpens, King's Mountain and Guilford Court House, at the battle of Kettle Creek, and also at the capture of Augusta in Georgia.
In most of his adventures in the Revolutionary war, Captain Freeman had with him a colored boy named Ambrose, who lived to a very great age and was well known to the younger generation as "Uncle Ambrose." He had his own cabin in Athens, Georgia. Incidents in regard to him were handed by tradition. He had on his left arm the scar of a sabre cut, made by British dragoons when General Tarleton's men were attacking and endeavoring to get away with the American trooper's horses that had been left at the camp, and which it was in part, the duty of the boy Ambrose to keep. The British dragoons had possession of the horses for awhile and Ambrose a prisoner also, but by a rapid retaliation the horses and servants were recovered. Old Ambrose used to tell about having been present at the siege of Savannah, when Count Pulaski, one of the American Generals, was killed. He said that he was back in the edge of the pine, or timber when the American army charged on the British fort and breastworks. He described Pulaski as mounted on a spirited horse, with a great white plume in his hat, and how gallantly he led the Americans in their advance. He saw Pulaski when he fell from the horse, and was present at the point to which he was brought back, mortally wounded.