"The result will be the same if four against one is the odds. We must win, and what a relief it will be to ride forward with a definite aim, instead of going here and there without effecting anything, as we have been doing these two years past."
"I agree with you on the last, Sidney; but holding our own against twice our force is a different matter."
The lad looked at me scrutinizingly for an instant, and then asked banteringly:
"Are you beginning to show the white feather just when our affairs look the most promising, Clare?"
"Not a bit of it," I replied indignantly. "To my mind it is no evidence of cowardice to count well the situation and strength of the enemy."
"But you went farther, and was near to questioning whether Tryon's force might not worst us, simply because of its size."
"And why might I not question it? A full thousand of his men are citizens of the Carolinas, and should be our equals in both riding and fighting."
"So they would were the cause the same; but they fight on the side of oppression, while we are striving to do that which shall be of benefit to every person in the American colonies."
I did not attempt to continue what was rapidly becoming an argument, simply because it was useless just then. I believed it was folly to claim that gentlemen of the Carolinas who did not hold to our opinions were our inferiors: but knew full well that it would be impossible to persuade my comrade to look at the matter in the same light I did.
It is a sad mistake to think that ourselves and our adherents are better men than those who oppose us, and that, I think, has been fully proven by this time.