“All you tell me tallies with such information as I have procured elsewhere,” he ended; “and had I but a free hand I make certain I could destroy Lafayette and completely subjugate the State in one campaign.”
“Surely, my Lord, you could not better serve the king. Virginia has been the great hot-bed of sedition, and if she were once smothered, the fire would quickly die out.”
“Almost the very words I writ to Sir Henry, but he declares it out of the question to leave me the troops with which to effect it. As you no doubt are aware, a French force has been landed at Rhode Island, and is even now on its march to join Mr. Washington; and, by a fortunate interception of some of his despatches to Congress, we have full information that the united force intend an attack on New York. So I am ordered to fall down to a good defensive post on the Chesapeake and to send a material part of my army to his aid.”
When finally the interview was ended, and Mr. Meredith asked one of the aides to take him to his room, it was explained that Mrs. Meredith and her daughter had been put in one and that he was to have a share of another.
“You ’d have had the floor or a tent, sir,” his guide told him, as he threw open the door, “but for Lord Clowes saying he’d take you in."
Surely enough, it was the commissary who warmly grasped the squire’s hand as he entered, and who cried, “Welcome to ye, friend Meredith! I heard of your strange arrival from nowhere, and glad I was to be assured ye were still in the flesh and once more among friends.”
“Ye’ve clear surprised my breath out of my windpipe,” returned the squire. “Who ’d have thought to find ye here?”
“And where else should I be, but where there ’s an army to be fed, and crops to feed them? I’ faith, never was there a richer harvest field for one who knows how to garner it. Why, man, aside from the captures of tobacco, now worth a great price, and other gains, over six thousand pounds I’ve made in the last two years, by shipping niggers, who think they are escaping to freedom, to our West India islands, and selling them to the planters there. This war is a perfect gold mine.
“Little of that it ’s been to me,” lamented his listener.
“Ye can make it such, an’ it please ye. She perceived me not, but I saw your daughter as ye rode up, and though I thought myself well cured of the infatuation, poof! one gloat was enough to set my blood afire, as if I were but a boy of eighteen again. Lord Clowes, with a cool ninety thousand, is ready to make her fortune and yours.”