"I called you," said Mary, "as loudly as I durst, and more than once, but you slept so hard!"
"That's like me too," replied Horse Shoe. "I'm both sleepy and watchful, according as I think there is need of my sarvices."
"Now to bed, my child," said Musgrove. "Your bed is the fittest place for your wearied body. God bless you, daughter!"
Once more the family broke up, and as Robinson left the room Mary followed him to the foot of the little stair that wound up into an attic chamber; here she detained him one moment, while she communicated to him in a half whisper,
"I have a friend, Mr. Robinson, that might help you to do something for Major Butler. His name is John Ramsay: he belongs to General Sumpter's brigade. If you would go to his father's, only six miles from here, on the upper road to Ninety-Six, you might hear where John was. But, may be, you are afraid to go so near to the fort?"
"May be so," said Robinson, with a look of comic incredulity. "I know the place, and I know the family, and, likely, John himself. It's a good thought, Mary, for I want help now, more than I ever did in my life. I'll start before daylight—for it won't do to let the sun shine upon me, with Innis's Tories so nigh. So, if I am missed to-morrow morning, let your father know how I come to be away."
"Tell John," said Mary, "I sent you to him. Mary Musgrove, remember."
"If I can't find John," replied Horse Shoe, "you're such a staunch little petticoat sodger, that I'll, perhaps, come back and enlist you. 'Tisn't everywhere that we can find such valiant wenches. I wish some of our men had a little of your courage; so, good night!"
The maiden now returned to the parlor, and Horse Shoe, under the guidance of Christopher Shaw, found a comfortable place of deposit for his hard-worked, though—as he would have Christopher believe—his unfatigued frame. The sergeant, however, was a man not born to cares, notwithstanding that his troubles were "as thick as the sparks that fly upward," and it is a trivial fact in his history, that, on the present occasion, he was not many seconds in bed before he was as sound asleep as the trapped partridges, in the fairy tale, which, the eastern chronicle records, fell into a deep sleep when roasting upon the spit, and did not wake for a hundred years.