I was up long before daylight, donned my old uniform, saw my horse fed and saddled, ate my breakfast, and was ready to go. I took a last look around my room, picked up my pack, and started down the stairs.
"Tom," whispered a voice above me, and I looked up and saw her. "Quick, quick," she whispered, "say good-by."
"Oh, my love!" I cried, and I drew her lips down to mine.
"And you will not forget me, Tom?" she said. "I shall pray for you every night and morning till you come back to me. Good-by."
"Forget you, Dolly? Nay, that will never be." And as I rode away through the bleak, gray morning, the mist rolling up from hill and river disclosed a world of wondrous fairness.
Which brings me back again to the camp at Winchester,—but what a journey it has been! As I look back, nothing strikes me so greatly as the length of the way by which I have come. I had thought that some dozen pages at the most would suffice for my introduction, but memory has led my pen along many a by-path, and paused beside a score of half-forgotten landmarks. Well, as it was written, so let it stand, for my heart is in it.
CHAPTER XIII
LIEUTENANT ALLEN SHOWS HIS SKILL
The days dragged on at Winchester, as days in camp will, and I accepted no more invitations to mess with the officers of the line. Indeed, I received none, and we provincial officers kept to ourselves. Major Washington had returned to Mount Vernon, but I found many of my old friends with the troops, so had no lack of company. There was Captain Waggoner, who had got his promotion eight months before, and Peyronie, recovered of his wound and eager for another bout with the French. He also had been promoted for his gallantry, and now had his own company of rangers. There was Captain Polson, for whom a tragic fate was waiting, and my old captain, Adam Stephen. And there was Carolus Spiltdorph, advanced to a lieutenancy like myself, and by great good fortune in my company. We began to chum together at once,—sharing our blankets and tobacco,—and continued so until the end.
Another friend I also found in young Harry Marsh, a son of Colonel Henry Marsh, who owned a plantation some eight or ten miles above the Frederick ferry, and a cousin of my aunt. Colonel Marsh had stopped one day at Riverview, while on his way home from Hampton, and had made us all promise to return his visit, but so many affairs had intervened that the promise had never been kept. The boy, who was scarce nineteen, had secured a berth as ensign in Peyronie's company, and he came frequently with his captain to our quarters to listen with all his ears to our stories of the Fort Necessity affair. He was a fresh, wholehearted fellow, and though he persisted in considering us all as little less than heroes, was himself heroic as any, as I was in the end to learn. We were a hearty and good-tempered company, and spent our evenings together most agreeably, discussing the campaign and the various small happenings of the camp. But as Spiltdorph shrewdly remarked, we were none of us so sanguinary as we had been a year before. I have since observed that the more a man sees of war, the less his eagerness for blood.