"I allow all that to be true, lad, and now what may be our duty?" Gavin Witherspoon asked.
"To learn where they halt for the night, and then carry the information back to camp," my brother said heedlessly, for indeed that seemed to be the only course left for us.
"There is in my mind a better plan, lad, and, if it so be you two are willing to take the chances, I venture to predict we will carry yonder gentlemen before General Marion, instead of hastening ahead to tell him they are coming."
"Do you mean that we three are to attack seven?" Percy asked, and the old man said with a smile:
"I have seen both you lads ride gallantly forward when it was a case of twenty against one, and yet you hesitate with the odds not much more than double against us?"
"Percy does not hesitate," I replied, jealous lest there should be a question as to the courage of one of our family. "So that it is in your mind, Gavin Witherspoon, we will agree to anything that has the faintest hope of success."
"This is my plan: Yonder strangers are doubtless enemies; but if they prove to be friends, then have we done them no harm by carrying out that which is in my mind. We will follow so far in the rear that there is no danger of being discovered until they camp for the night, and then it will go hard indeed if we fail to find an opportunity for making them prisoners."
I did not agree with Gavin Witherspoon in his belief that we might readily make prisoners of seven men; yet was I well pleased to venture the attempt, believing something of good might come, even though we failed in the purpose. It was seldom we who held true to the colonies had an opportunity of striking even so slight a blow as this when the odds were no more than two against one, and it would have been folly for us to have refused such a chance.
Percy, once the plan was made plain, did not consider it necessary to say whether he agreed to it or not.
To his mind, all who were acquainted with him should know he would favor any plan, and there was little need for Gavin Witherspoon to go further into details than he had already done.