"With pleasure," replied the officer. "It will be a new and pleasant experience."
He looked around him. Where was the dining-room? where, at least, the table, on which their mid-day repast was to be spread? Where were the dishes and the other paraphernalia which civilization demands as the essentials of a modern dinner?—Where? His eyes found no answer to this mental question. Marion looked at him with a smile.
"We dine here in simple style, captain," he remarked. "Pray be seated."
He took his seat on a mossy log, and pointed to an opposite one for the officer. A minute or two afterwards the camp purveyor made his appearance, bearing a large piece of bark, on which smoked some roasted sweet potatoes. They came from a fire of brushwood blazing at a distance.
"Help yourself, captain," said Marion, taking a swollen and brown-coated potato from the impromptu platter, breaking it in half, and beginning to eat with a forest appetite.
The officer looked at the viands and at his host with eyes of wonder.
"Surely, general," he exclaimed, "this cannot be your ordinary fare?"
"Indeed it is," said Marion. "And we are fortunate, on this occasion, having company to entertain, to have more than our usual allowance."
The officer had little more to say. He helped himself to the rural viands, which he ate with thought for salt. On returning to Georgetown he gave in his report, and then tendered his commission to his superior officer, saying that a people who could fight on roots for fare could not be, and ought not to be, subdued, and that he, for one, would not serve against them.
Of the exploits of Marion we can but speak briefly; they were too many to be given in detail. His blows were so sharply dealt, in such quick succession, and at such remote points, that his foes were puzzled, and could hardly believe that a single band was giving them all this trouble. Their annoyance culminated in their sending one of their best cavalry leaders, Colonel Wemyss, to surprise and crush the Swamp-Fox, then far from his hiding-place. Wemyss got on Marion's trail, and pursued him with impetuous haste. But the wary patriot was not to be easily surprised, nor would he fight where he had no chance to win. Northward he swiftly made his way, through swamps and across deep streams, into North Carolina. Wemyss lost his trail, found it, lost it again, and finally, discouraged and revengeful, turned back and desolated the country from which he had driven its active defender, and which was looked on as the hot-bed of rebellion.