The sword he gave me hangs above my desk as I write. I am free to confess that I have performed no great exploits with it, and when I took it down from its hook the other day to look at it, I found that it had rusted in its scabbard.
CHAPTER XXI
VIRGINIA BIDS US WELCOME
"To my mind, there is only one thing to be done. That is to retire."
The speaker was Colonel Henry Innes, commandant of the fort, but as he looked up and down the row of faces opposite him, he saw few which showed assent. Scarcely had the rear-guard of Dunbar's troops disappeared among the trees which lined the narrow military road, when Colonel Innes had called this meeting of the officers left at the fort, "to decide," as the summons put it, "on our future course of action." As if, I thought indignantly to myself, there could be any question as to what our future course of action should be.
"We are left here," continued the speaker, in a louder voice and growing somewhat red in the face, "with scarce five hundred men, all provincials, and most of them unfit for service. A great part of the army's equipment has been abandoned or destroyed back there in the woods. In short, we are so weak that we can hope neither to advance against the enemy nor to repel an assault, should they march against us in force, as they are most like to do."
For a moment there was an ominous silence.
"May I ask what it is you propose, Colonel Innes?" asked Captain
Waggoner at last.
"I propose to abandon the place," replied Innes, "and to fall back to Winchester or some other point where our wounded may lie in safety and our men have opportunity to recover from the fatigues of the campaign."
Again there was a moment's silence, and all of us, as by a common impulse, glanced at Colonel Washington, who sat at one end of the table, his head bowed in gloomy thought. The fever, which he had shaken off for a time, had been brought back by the arduous work he had insisted on performing, and he was but the shadow of his former self. He felt our eyes upon him and suddenly raised his head.