Placing their father's old firelock in their hands, "Go forth, my children," she said, "repel the foot of the invader or see my face no more."
But Tarleton did not force the mountain pass,—the boys went on down to join Lafayette.
From farm and forest, children and grandsires hurried to Lafayette. The proud earl retired to the sea and stopped to rest at the little peninsula of Yorktown, waiting for reinforcements.
Down suddenly from the north came Washington with his tattered Continentals and Rochambeau's gay Frenchmen, and the French fleet sailed into the Chesapeake. Cornwallis was bottled up at Yorktown.
The boy, Lafayette, had simply put the stopper in the bottle and waited.
Seventy cannon rolled in on Yorktown. George Rogers Clark, all the West, was appealing to Washington, but the great chief unmoved kept his eye on Lord Cornwallis.
On the 19th of October, 1781, the aristocratic marquis, who had commenced his career as aide-de-camp to a king, surrendered to the rebels of America.
"'Wallis has surrendered! surrendered! surrendered!"
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark flung up their caps with other boys and shouted with the best of them, "'Wallis has surrendered!"
After the surrender of Cornwallis, Washington and Lafayette and the officers of the French and American armies went to Fredericksburg to pay their respects to Mary, the mother of Washington. The entire surrounding country was watching in gala attire, and among them the old cavalier, John Clark of Caroline.