“We are but two lone women, and what could we do against a mob? You go too far in this matter, my daughter. An you alter not your behaviour, we shall be driven from the town, or else have our house burned over our heads. Only yesterday Sally Ruffin was telling your Aunt Clevering of some threats she had heard concerning you.”
But Joscelyn shrugged her shoulders. “They will not harm you, mother; you are too much of their party creed. And as for me, I fear them not; they will do naught more serious than to tear down my royal picture-gallery from the porch, and break a few more window-panes.”
And truly martial events were crowding so fast upon each other that the community had no time to resent the caprices of a girl. All interest was now centred in the south. Greene had superseded Gates; Cowpens had been fought and Tarleton sent in rout to Cornwallis, who started in hot haste to chastise the victors and recover his captured troopers. But Morgan threw his battalion over the Catawba; Greene took entire command, and then begun that marvellous retreat, every step of which was as an American victory. The pursuit was close behind. The whole country held its breath at the spectacle of two great armies vying against each other on almost parallel roads for the far-off fords of the Dan. Twenty-five, even thirty miles a day they tramped it over roads deep in mire that held them back as with a fiendish purpose. It was a spectacle to stir one’s blood, no matter on which side the sympathies,—this Titanic struggle, this heroic race. The rear-guard of the pursued, and the van of the pursuer, often bivouacked in sight of each other’s watch-fires. Petty strife was at an end; the great principles of war alone held sway, and it were hard to say in which camp there was more of resolute endeavour.
The flooding rains detained Cornwallis at the Catawba, and yet again at the Yadkin, giving the Americans somewhat of advantage, so that Joscelyn Cheshire said in her mocking way, that the “weather was supplying the deficiencies of nature and making a great general out of Nathaniel Greene.”
“Rather is God aiding a righteous cause,” Aunt Clevering retorted.
Hillsboro’ was in a fever of excitement during those days, knowing that somewhere beyond the mountains that skirted her on the west, these armies, like mighty leviathans, were writhing on their courses. The town lay almost in the path of both, and each day was full of rumours and contradictions. The country people, both Whigs and Tories, crowded in to learn more speedily the news. The streets were thronged each day with anxious men and women, asking each other questions and exchanging surmises. And every day Joscelyn rode her horse from the bridge that spanned the Eno on the western edge of the town to the clump of boulders called the “Hen and Chickens,” which cropped out of a common that lay high to the eastward. And always she wore in her hat, with jaunty grace, a cockade of scarlet ribbon; and Tories bowed low as she passed, and Whigs scowled and shrugged their shoulders, marvelling at her daring.
But at last the news came that the race was done; Greene had crossed the Dan to the safety of Virginia, and a union with the reënforcements hastily spared him from the northern division, and Cornwallis was baffled. Disappointed, he turned southward once more, and one February day the vanguard rode haughtily into Hillsboro’, and ere night the sloping commons, flanking the town to the east and northeast, were white with a tent city swarming with the soldiers of the king.
In the general excitement Betty ran across the street and, twisting Joscelyn’s apron-string the while, asked, “Do you think Eus—that is, that you will have any friends on Cornwallis’s staff?”
“I am quite sure you will have one,” answered Joscelyn, with a laughing accent on the second pronoun. “Mary is already in the parlour wanting me to go with her and hunt him; what message shall I carry that my welcome may be sure?”
“Oh, none!” hastily answered Betty. Then added, with a shy laugh, “Of course I shall have to see him and thank him for his efforts in Richard’s behalf.”