He began to prepare the meal, while I bathed my face.
"I was very tired," I explained, "but now am ready for any service. What has occurred since I lay down?"
"Very little; Duval stopped a moment to report, an' two of my couriers rode past this way. We are going to have a goodly sized gathering to-night, an' from all I hear will need every rifle. Grant's purpose is, as I supposed, to guard the forage train into Philadelphia. He expects to meet them somewhere between Fellowship and Mount Laurel, an' the chances are we shall have to fight both detachments. But fall to, man, an' we can discuss all this as we eat."
He talked freely enough while we remained there, but conversation veered to the book he had been reading, and I learned little of his plans, except that he relied upon surprise, and swiftness of movement to overcome the decided advantage of numbers. After we mounted and rode away, scarcely a word was exchanged between us. I recall asking a question or two, but his answers did not encourage any attempt at probing, and I consequently fell silent, urging my horse in the effort to keep pace with his heavier mount. We rode straight across the country, avoiding the roads, and keeping under cover as much as possible, taking advantage of every depression of the surface. Farrell knew every inch of the way, and his watchful eyes scanned the summit of the ridges with constant vigilance. Just before dusk we overtook a dozen horsemen in the breaks of a creek bottom, roughly dressed fellows, heavily armed, riding in the same direction as ourselves, and, after the exchange of a word or two, the whole party of us jogged along together. Others straggled in, singly, or by small groups, as darkness closed about, until we formed quite a respectable company. It was rather a silent, weird procession, scarcely a word being spoken, and no sound heard, other than the dull reverberation of unshod hoofs on the soft turf. To me, glancing back from where I held position beside Farrell, they seemed like spectral figures, with no rattle of accoutrements, no glimmer of steel, no semblance of uniform. Yet my heart warmed to the knowledge that these were no holiday warriors, but grim fighting men. I had seen the faces, some boyish, others graybeards, and had read in them all sternness of purpose. Each hand gripped a brown rifle, and the fingers that met mine were rough and hard from toil. No man among them had asked me a question; with Farrell's simple statement there had come the hand-grip, the eyes looking straight into my own; the silent acceptance of me as comrade. It all served to drive into my consciousness the fact that these were men seeking nothing for themselves, but ready to battle and die for the cause they had espoused. They had left their ploughs in the furrow to strike a blow for liberty.
It was an hour or more after dark when our compact little body of horsemen rode down a gully into a broad creek bottom, and then advanced through a fringe of trees to the edge of the stream. There was a young moon in the sky yielding a spectral light, barely making those faces nearest me visible. At the summit of the clay bank, shadowed by the forest growth encircling them, were the others who had gathered at this war rendezvous, the majority dismounted, holding their horses in readiness for action. As we rode in among them neighbors clasped hands silently, but the words exchanged were few. Farrell forced his horse through the press toward where a tall figure sat stiff in the saddle, and my own horse followed unguided.
"A goodly turn-out, Duval," he commented briefly. "What was the number before we came?"
"Forty-seven rifles," the Lieutenant's voice nasal, and high pitched. "The men from Orchard and Springdale are not in yet. How many arrived with you?"
"Twenty; ample for our purpose, even if the others fail us. This is Major Lawrence of the Maryland Line."
I shook his long, thin hand, marking the iron grip of the fingers.
"We'll introduce you to some typical Jersey fighting to-night, Major," he said genially. "We have a style all our own."