"Aye, and have ever since she was in pinafores, and I a hobbledehoy in Master Wytheby's school."
"So long? I thought Mr. Stair was a later comer in Mecklenburg."
"He came eight years ago, as one of Tryon's underlings. Madge was even then motherless; the same little wilful prat-a-pace she has ever been. I would you knew her, Jack. 'Twould make this shiftiness of mine seem less the thing it is."
"So you have stayed at home a-courting while others fought to give you leisure," said I, thinking to rally him. But he took it harder than I meant.
"'Tis just that, Jack; and I am fair ashamed. While the fighting kept to the North it did not grind so keen; but now, with the redcoats at our doors, and the Tories sacking and burning in every settlement, 'tis enough to flay an honest man alive. God-a-mercy, Jack! I'll go; I've got to go, or die of shame!"
He sat silent after that, and as there seemed nothing that a curst old campaigner could say at such a pass, I bore him company.
By and by he harked back to the matter of his errand, making some apology for his coming to me as the baronet's second.
"'Twas none of my free offering, you may be sure," he added. "But it so happened that Captain Falconnet once did me a like turn. I had chanced to run afoul of that captain of Hessian pigs, Lauswoulter, at cards, and Falconnet stood my friend—though now I bethink me, he did seem over-anxious that one or the other of us should be killed."
"As how?" I inquired.
"When Lauswoulter slipped and I might have spitted him, and didn't, Falconnet was for having us make the duel à outrance. But that's beside the mark. Having served me then, he makes the point that I shall serve him now."