Here ends Lee's account, apparently as first written; but subsequently he seems to have acquired some further information of his sergeant's later life which he appends in a note, as will appear later.
When Champe was with the British in New York, he, according to Lee and as appears above, refused to enlist in the enemy's forces; but there is another account which says that when he arrived in New York "he was placed in the company of Captain Cameron." In the Champe family is the tradition that he wrote to Lee of this:
"I was yesterday compelled to a most affecting step, but one indispensable the success of my plan. It was necessary for me to accept a commission in the traitor's legion that I might have uninterrupted access to his house."
This Captain Cameron, after the termination of the war, married in Virginia and fortunately kept a diary, a part of which was published in The British United Service Journal. From it we learn, through Howe,[120] that Cameron had occasion to traverse the forests of Loudoun with a single servant and—familiar touch—was caught in one of those violent thunderstorms so characteristic of upper Piedmont. Night came on, no habitation or shelter of any kind was discernible to our travellers in that wilderness and, believing themselves in grave peril, they were becoming really alarmed when they saw through the woods a faint light. Riding toward it, they discovered it came from one of the typical log-houses of a frontier clearing and they lost no time in seeking shelter. The owner of the little home received them with true backwoods hospitality. And now quoting from Captain Cameron's journal:
"He would not permit either master or man to think of their horses, but insisted that we should enter the house, where fire and changes of apparel awaited us, he himself led the jaded animals to a shed, rubbed them down and provided them with forage. It would have been affectation of the worst kind to dispute his pleasure in this instance, so I readily sought the shelter of his roof, to which a comely dame bade me welcome, and busied herself in preventing my wishes. My drenched uniform was exchanged for a suit of my host's apparel; my servant was accomodated in the same manner, and we soon afterwards found ourselves seated before a blazing fire of wood, by the light of which our hostess assiduously laid out a well-stocked supper table. I need not say that all this was in the highest degree comfortable. Yet I was not destined to sit down to supper without discovering still greater cause for wonder. In due time our host returned and the first glance which I cast towards him satisfied me that he was no stranger. The second set everything like doubt at rest. Sergeant Champe stood before me; the same in complexion, in feature, though somewhat less thoughtful in the expression of his eye, as when he first joined my company in New York.
"I cannot say my sensations on recognizing my ci-devant sergeant were altogether agreeable. The mysterious manner in which he both came and went, the success with which he had thrown a veil over his own movements, and the recollection that I was the guest of a man who probably entertained no sense of honour, either public or private, excited in me a vague and indefinite alarm, which I found it impossible on the instant to conceal. I started, and the movement was not lost upon Champe. He examined my face closely; and a light appearing to burst all at once upon his memory, he ran forward toward the spot where I sat.
"'Welcome, welcome, Captain Cameron' said he 'a thousand times welcome to my roof; you behaved well to me when I was under your command, and deserve more of hospitality than I possess the power to offer; but what I do possess is very much at your service, and heartily glad am I that accident should have thus brought us together again. You have doubtless looked upon me as a twofold traitor, and I cannot blame you if you have. Yet I should wish to stand well in your estimation too; and therefore I will, if you please, give a faithful narrative of the causes which led both to my arrival in New York, and to my abandonment of the British Army on the shores of the Chesapeake. You are tired with your day's travel; you stand in need of food and rest. Eat and drink, I pray you, and sleep soundly; and tomorrow, if you are so disposed, I will try to put my character straight in the estimation of the only British officer of whose good opinion I am covetous.'
"There was so much frankness and apparent sincerity in this, that I could not resist it, so I sat down to supper with a mind perfectly at ease and having eaten heartily I soon afterwards retired to rest, on a clean pallet which was spread for me on the floor. Sleep was not slow in visiting my eyelids; nor did I awake until long after the sun had risen on the morrow, and the hardy and active settlers, to whose kindness I was indebted, had gone through a considerable portion of their day's labour.
"I found my host next morning the same open, candid and hospitable man that he had shewn himself on first recognizing me. He made no allusion, indeed, during breakfast, to what had fallen from him over night; but when he heard me talk of getting my horses ready, he begged to have a few minutes' conversation with me. His wife, for such my hostess was, immediately withdrew, under the pretext of attending to her household affairs, upon which he took a seat beside me and began his story."
After the war and, it is said, on the personal recommendation of General Washington, Sergeant Champe was appointed to the position of doorkeeper or sergeant-at-arms of the Continental Congress, then meeting at Philadelphia, but obliged, on account of rioting, to remove to Trenton. His name appears on a roll of the 25th August, 1783, as holding that position. Soon afterwards he returned to Loudoun, married and acquired a small holding near what is now Dover, between the later towns of Aldie and Middleburg, close by the present Little River Turnpike. The State of Virginia has erected one of its excellent road markers adjacent to the spot, bearing the following words: