"Dear Pop," he said, "we are sent like sacrifices to the altar. They have given me a handful of men and expect me to conquer whole nations. I know that I shall never see you more. Good-by, Pop, and God bless you."
Orme turned away for a moment to master his emotion.
"'T was his last night in London," he said when he could speak. "He was to set out on the morrow, and he asked Colonel Burton and myself to go with him to visit a very dear protegee of his, George Anne Bellamy, the actress, to whom, I think, he has left all his property. He used to her almost the same words he has just repeated."
"So he had doubts of his success," said Washington musingly. "Well, he was a brave man, for he never permitted them to be seen."
He was fast growing weaker. His voice faltered and failed, and he lay without movement in his litter, continuing so until eight o'clock in the evening. We had halted for the night, and had gathered about his couch, watching him as his breathing grew slowly fainter. At last, when we thought him all but gone, he opened his eyes, and seeing the ring of anxious faces about him, smiled up at them.
"It is the end," he said quietly. "You will better know how to deal with them next time;" and turning his head to one side, he closed his eyes.
We buried him at daybreak. The grave was dug in the middle of the road, so that the wagons passing over it might efface all trace of its existence and preserve it inviolate from the hands of the Indians. Our chaplain, Mr. Hughes, had been severely wounded, so it was Colonel Washington who read the burial service. I shall not soon forget that scene,—the open grave in the narrow roadway, the rude coffin draped with a flag, the martial figure within in full uniform, his hands crossed over the sword on his breast, the riderless charger neighing for its master, and the gray light of the morning over it all. The burial service has never sounded more impressively in my ears than it did as read that morning, in Colonel Washington's strong, melodious voice, to that little group of listening men, in the midst of the wide, unbroken, whispering forest. How often have I heard those words of hope and trust in God's promise to His children, and under what varying circumstances!
We lowered him into the grave, and lingered near until the earth was heaped about it. Then the drums beat the march, the wagons rolled over it, and in half an hour no trace of it remained. So to this day, he lies there undisturbed in the heart of the wilderness, in a grave which no man knows. Others have railed at him,—have decried him and slandered him,—but I remember him as he appeared on that last day of all, a brave and loyal gentleman, not afraid of death, but rather welcoming it, and the memory is a sweet and dear one. If he made mistakes, he paid for them the uttermost penalty which any man could pay,—and may he rest in peace.
Of the remainder of that melancholy flight little need be said. We struggled on through the wilderness, bearing our three hundred wounded with us as best we could, and marking our path with their shallow graves, as they succumbed one after another to the hardships of the journey. On the twenty-second day of July we reached Fort Cumberland, and I learned with amazement that Dunbar did not propose to stop here, although he had placed near a hundred and fifty miles between him and the enemy, but to carry his whole army to Philadelphia, leaving Virginia open to Indian and French invasion by the very road which we had made. He alleged that he must go into winter quarters, and that, too, though it was just the height of summer. Colonel Washington ventured to protest against this folly, but was threatened with court-martial, and came out of Dunbar's quarters red with anger and chagrin.
And sure enough, on the second of August, Dunbar marched away with all his effective men, twelve hundred strong, leaving at the fort all his sick and wounded and the Virginia and Maryland troops, over whom he attempted to exercise no control. I bade good-by to Orme and Allen and such other of the officers as I had met. Colonel Burton took occasion to come to me the night before he marched, and presented me with a very handsome sword in token of his gratitude, as he said, for saving his life,—an exploit, as I pointed out to him, small enough beside a hundred others that were done that day.