The hour of dusk had scarcely arrived before they were again mounted on horseback. They proceeded cautiously upon the road that led through the wood, until it intersected the highway; and, having attained this point, John Ramsay, who was well acquainted with every avenue through the country, now led the way, by a private and scarcely discernible path, into the adjacent forest, and thence, by a tedious and prolonged route, directed his companion to the banks of the Ennoree. This course of travel took them immediately to the plain on which Innis had been encamped—the late field of battle. All here was still and desolate. The sheds and other vestiges of the recent bivouac were yet visible, but not even the farm-house that had constituted Innis's head-quarters was reoccupied by its original inhabitants. The bat whirred over the plain, and the owl hooted from the neighboring trees. The air still bore the scent of dead bodies which had either been left exposed, or so meagrely covered with earth as to taint the breeze with noisome exhalations.
"There is a great difference, John," said Horse Shoe, who seldom let an occasion to moralize after his own fashion slip by, "there's a great difference between a hot field and a stale one. Your hot field makes a soldier, for there's a sort of a stir in it that sets the blood to running merrily through a man, and that's what I call pleasure. But when everything is festering like the inside of a hospital—or what's next door to it, a grave-yard—it is mighty apt to turn a dragoon's stomach and make a preacher of him. This here dew falls to-night like frost, and chills me to the heart, which it wouldn't do if it didn't freshen up the smell of dead men. And there's the hogs, busy as so many sextons among Innis's Tories: you may hear them grunt over their suppers. Well, there is one man among them that I'll make bold to say these swine hav'n't got the stomach to touch—that's Hugh Habershaw: he sleeps in the mud in yonder fence-corner."
"If you had done nothing else in the fight, Horse Shoe, but cleave that fellow's skull," said Ramsay, "the ride we took would have been well paid for—it was worth the trouble."
"And the rapscallionly fellow to think," added Horse Shoe, "that I was a going to save him from the devil's clutches, when I had a broadsword in my hand, and his bald, greasy pate in reach. His brain had nothing in it but deceit and lies, and all sorts of cruel thoughts, enough to poison the air when I let them out. I have made an observation, John, all my life on them foul-mouthed, swilling braggers—that when there's so much cunning and blood-thirstiness, there's no room for a thimbleful of courage: their heart's in their belly, which is as much as to signify that the man's a most beastly coward. But now, it is my opinion that we had best choose a spot along upon the river here, and leave our horses. I think we can manœuvre better on foot: the miller's house is short of two miles, and we mought be noticed if we were to go nearer on horseback."
This proposal was adopted, and the two friends, when they had ridden a short distance below the battle ground, halted in a thicket, where they fastened their horses, and proceeded towards the mill on foot. After following the course of the stream for near half an hour, they perceived, at a distance, a light glimmering through the window of Allen Musgrove's dwelling. This induced a second pause in their march, when Ramsay suggested the propriety of his advancing alone to reconnoitre the house, and attempting to gain some speech with the inmates. He accordingly left the sergeant to amuse himself with his own thoughts.
Horse Shoe took his seat beneath a sycamore, where he waited a long time in anxious expectation of the return of his comrade. Growing uneasy, at last, at John's delay, he arose, and stole cautiously forward until he reached the mill, where he posted himself in a position from which he was able to see and hear what was going on at the miller's house. The porch was occupied by three or four persons, whose conversation, as it came to the sergeant's ear, proved them to be strangers to the family; and a ray of light from a taper within, after a while, made this more manifest, by revealing the scarlet uniform of the enemy. Horse Shoe was thus confirmed in the truth of the report that Butler had been brought to this place under a military escort. With this conviction he returned to the sycamore, where he again sat down to wait for the coming of his companion.
It was after ten o'clock, and the sergeant was casting over in his thoughts the long absence of John, when his attention was aroused by the sound of footsteps, and the next instant John Ramsay and Mary Musgrove stood beside him.
"What kept you till this time of night?" was the sergeant's accost.
"Softly, man, I have news for you," replied Ramsay. "Here is Mary herself."
"And so she is, indeed!" exclaimed the sergeant, at the same time shaking her hand, "this is my petticoat-sodger; how goes it with you, girl?"