"My turn will come," I answered; "but is there anything I can do for you?"
"I am afraid not, unless you bribe the guards to let me escape."
"That would be clear against the articles of war," I replied. We fell to talking, and then it was I heard of the Tory and his daughter.
"It was about Christmas time," said Farquharson, "that the King sent a message over the sea, granting him a pardon for the part he had taken in '45, for you know he was out then. The Sea Raven was about to clear in a week for Glasgow, and a sudden longing seemed to seize him to see once more the dash of the waters through the Braes of Mar and the heather-crowned hills of old Aberdeen; and so, within a week, they had sailed away; and as he left he said to me: 'A revolt drove me from old Scotland; another sends me back again. I wonder where fortune will end my days.' It is a strange fortune that has followed him through life."
"It is, indeed," I replied.
So they sailed away over the seas, gone back to their own land and people; and between that land and mine burned high the flame of war. But through the flame and across the broad stretch of the waters, I saw the form of the maid beckoning me on, and though my hope was well-nigh gone, I buckled tight my sword-belt and doggedly went on,—went on, through the long march to the southward, the toil, the hunger, and the defeat of the Camden campaign.
The great triumph of Eutaw Springs and Cowpens, as we drove back Cornwallis from the hill country to the shore, rolled back the tide of invasion and drowned it in the sea.
A year went by, bringing me adventures not a few, and with the adventures came wounds and honours; and when there came the news of the leaguer of Yorktown, it found me a full Colonel in the army of the South.
It was not my fortune to be present at that last great feat of our arms, when the great General struck the blow that freed us for ever from the tyranny of the King.
But when the news came down to us in the savannahs of the South we hailed it with joy, for we saw once more before us the quiet, smiling fields of Maryland, with the ease and comfort and plenty of it all that awaited but our coming to repay us for the years of strife and blood.