"We may call it the little maid's judgment on those who have made her fatherless. But for her stopping of me I should have come unprepared into the camp of the enemy. I am the bearer of a letter from Lord Cornwallis to this same Major Ferguson."
"You?—a bearer of Lord Cornwallis's despatches?" The old man put a blade's length between us and held the little one aloft as if he feared I might do her a mischief. I laughed and bade him be comforted.
"'Tis a long story, and I may not take the time to tell it now. But a word will suffice. Like yourself, I made my submission—and for the same purpose. My Lord accepted it and made me his despatch-bearer because he thought I knew the way to Ferguson when no one else knew it. But enough of this; time presses. Let me have ink and the quill."
The old man led the way into the cabin and put his writing tools at my disposal. Left to myself, I should have broken the seal of the packet; but my wise old ally, cool and collected now, showed me how to split the paper beneath the wax. Opened and spread before us on the rude slab table, the letter proved to be the briefest of military commands: a peremptory order to Ferguson to rejoin the main body at once, proceeding by forced marches if needful, and on no account to risk engagement with the over-mountain men.
How to change such an order to reverse it in effect, I knew no more than a yokel; but here again my ancient ally showed himself a man of parts. Dressing the pen to make it the fellow of that used by my Lord Cornwallis, he scanned the handwriting of the letter closely, made a few practice pot-hooks to get the imitative hang of it, and wrote this postscriptum at the bottom of the sheet.
Since writing the foregoing I have your courier, and his despatches. Lieutenant-colonel Tarleton, with four hundred of the legion, will take the road for you to-night. If battle is forced upon you, make a stand and hold the enemy in check till reinforcements come.
Cornwallis.
The old man sanded the wet penstrokes and bade me say if it would serve. 'Twas a most beautiful forgery. My Lord's crabbed handwriting was copied to a nicety, and of the two signatures I doubt if the earl himself could have told which was his own; 'twas the same circle "C," the same printing "r," the same heavy precision throughout.
"Capital!" said I. "Now, if the lightning would but strike these pursuers of mine, we should have the Scotsman at bay in a hand's turn."
"How?" said the patriarch; "are you followed?"
I told him I was; told him of my Lord's plot within a plot—that three light-horse riders, one of them a lieutenant bearing duplicate despatches, had been hard upon my heels all the way from Charlotte.