He gave me his hand most cordially.
"You are very welcome, Captain; Davie is my name. I trust we may come to know each other better. You are in disguise, as I take it; do you bring news of the army?"
"On the contrary, I am thirsting for news," I rejoined. "I and three others have but now returned from pursuing a British and Indian powder convoy into the mountains to the westward. We have been out five weeks and more."
He looked at me curiously. "You and three others?" he queried. "Come apart and tell me about it whilst Pompey is broiling the venison. I scent a whole Iliad in that word of yours, Captain Ireton."
"One thing first, if you please, Colonel Davie," I begged. "My companions are faring forward on the road to Queensborough. They know naught of my detention. Will you send a man to overtake them with a note from me?"
The colonel indulged me in the most gentlemanly manner; and when my note to Jennifer was despatched we sat together at the roots of a great oak and I told him all that had befallen our little rescue party. He heard me through patiently, and when the tale was ended was good enough to say that I had earned a commission for my part in the affair. I laughed and promptly shifted that burden to Ephraim Yeates's shoulders.
"The old hunter was our general, Colonel Davie. He did all of the planning and the greater part of the executing. But for him and the friendly Catawba, it would have gone hard with Jennifer and me."
"I fear you are over-modest, Captain," was all the reply I got; and then my kindly host fell amuse. When he spoke again 'twas to give me a résumé in brief of the military operations North and South.
At the North, as his news ran, affairs remained as they had been, save that now the French king had sent an army to supplement the fleet, and Count Rochambeau and the allies were encamped on Rhode Island ready to take the field.
In the South the distressful situation we had left behind us on that August Sunday following the disastrous battle of Camden was but little changed. General Gates, with the scantiest following, had hastened first to Salisbury and later to Hillsborough, and had since been busy striving to reassemble his scattered forces.