“Is it a townsman who has written these reports, think you?” asked the girl, going over in her mind the people who might be implicated, with a quick inward throb for some of her friends.
“I judge not, for there are references to the writer’s journey back from the Dan. Evidently it is a follower of Greene who knows this country well. He is exceedingly artful, but his capture is necessarily certain, with all the precautions we have taken.”
“And what would be his fate, if caught?”
“A spy is shot—or mayhap his lordship will hang him on the hill yonder, where they tell me Governor Tryon swung up the traitorous Regulators in years gone by. ’Twould be but another chapter in the red history of this your Tyburn Hill.”
The young soldier laughed at his own allusion, but Joscelyn shuddered; for the first time she seemed to fully realize the grim actualities of war. Her companions chatted on gayly, and finally she forced herself to join in the conversation; but somehow they could not get away from the subject of those surreptitious reports and their author.
The wide upland common had been turned into a parade ground, and was full of soldiers marching and counter-marching. The general and his staff were already afield and saluted the newcomers as they passed on to the “Hen and Chickens,” about which a party of spectators, chiefly ladies, were already congregated. Here the officers left Joscelyn with some friends, and rode away to their different commands. It was some time before the parade began, and in the interim there was much laughing and talking around the rough boulders. And here again Joscelyn heard of the wary scout.
“Who are those men there to the left?” she asked, by way of changing the conversation, and pointed to five or six men in citizen’s dress who were grouped apart by themselves. Some were mounted; some on foot.
“Oh, those are the Tory recruits who came in this morning. They have not yet been assigned to their respective commands, and so are viewing the scene merely as spectators; to-morrow they will be put in the ranks. The tall one on the right was with Pyle when Lee surprised and routed him. I understand he says information of Pyle’s movements was sent to Lee by some one within the town here—probably a Continental spy.”
There was more to tell; but the parade was beginning and the conversation ended, much to Joscelyn’s relief. It somehow unstrung her nerves to think of another hanging up on Regulators’ Hill. From her saddle she watched the scarlet companies advance, wheel, pass directly in front of the general’s staff, and finally take position in the long line which was thus formed across the field. It was a stirring sight, and her fingers relaxed their hold on the rein as she leaned forward to watch every movement. Suddenly a band stationed near the group struck up a lively air. The unexpected blare of the trumpets startled Joscelyn’s horse; an upward toss of his head shook the rein from her inert hand, and then with the panic of fear upon him he wheeled about and dashed off at a mad pace. The women in the group behind screamed; for the rein was swinging about the animal’s feet, and the girl in the saddle was utterly at his mercy. From the first plunge Joscelyn realized the peril of her position; for a few seconds she clung terror stricken to the horn of her saddle; then she shook her foot free from the stirrup and eased her knee from the pommel, for an awful memory had come to her. A hundred yards ahead, directly in the path of the frantic horse, was a deep ditch, ragged with rocks; there the race must end in death to the horse—and mayhap to the rider. Her one chance was to leap from the saddle. It took but a second for this to flash through her mind; but even as she turned slightly in her saddle, a voice rang out sternly above the braying horns and the thundering hoof beats:—