"Thereby hangs a tale. I told you how I was out with the Minute Men in '76 at Moore's Creek, where we fought the Scotchmen. It was our first pitched battle, and I opine it smelled somewhat of severity on both sides—no quarter was asked, and the Tory MacDonalds fought like fiends for King George, small cause as they had to love the House of Hanover."
"How was that?" I would ask, being as little familiar with the low country settlements as any native-born Carolinian could be.
"They were expatriates for the Pretender's sake, many of them. Mistress Flora's husband was one of the prisoners we took. But, as I was saying, they were Tories to a man, and they fought wickedly. When it was over, the prisoners would have fared hardly but for a woman. In the thick of the fight, Mistress Mary Slocumb, of Dobbs, whose husband was with us, came storming down upon the field, having rode a-gallop some forty-odd miles because she dreamed her goodman was killed. She begged for the prisoners, and so Caswell hanged only those who were blood guilty—these and the house burners. A raw-boned piper named M'Gillicuddy fell to my lot, and he is now my majordomo at Jennifer House; as honest a fellow as ever skirled a pibroch."
"That was like you," I said; "to make a friend and retainer out of your prisoner. And so this Highland piper has been your fencing master, has he?"
"'Twas he taught me what little I know of the claymore play; and this stout old blade is his. 'Tis as good as a woodman's ax when you have the knack of swinging it."
"Truly," said I. "Also, you seemed to have the knack, and the strength as well, in spite of the crippled arm you were carrying in a sling the night before when they haled you into Colonel Tarleton's court at Appleby."
"A little ruse of war," he said, laughing and making a fist to show me his arm was strong and sound again. "'Twas M'Gillicuddy put me up to it, saying they would be like to deal the gentler with a wounded man. But how came you to know?"
Here was another chance to tell him what he should be told, but the words would not say themselves.
"I stood within arm's reach of you that night," said I; and from that I hastened swiftly through the story of my trial as a spy and what it came to in the morning, and never mentioned Margery's part in it at all.
"You have a bitter enemy in Frank Falconnet," was his comment, when I had made an end of this recounting of my adventures. "He knows you are in hiding hereabouts, and has been scouring the neighborhood well for you—or, more belike, for both of us."