"Maybe," replied the orderly dryly, "Forward!"
"Let me go!" exclaimed Hodges, "It is the pirate."
"Pirate?" repeated the soldier, who had again laid hold of his prisoner. "If you cut any more such capers, I'll take you to prison in a way that your bones will remember for a week to come. This young man says," added he to the officers, who just then came up, "that yonder fellow is a pirate."
"Obey your orders," was the sole reply of the general; and again the orderly pushed his prisoner onwards.
"And you?" said the militia general, turning to the foreigners—"Who may you be?"
One of the strangers, half of whose face was bound up with a black silk bandage, whilst of the other half, which was covered with a large plaster, only a grey eye was visible, now stepped forward, and bowed with an air of easy confidence.
"I believe I have the honour to address officers of militia, preparing for the approaching conflict. If, as I hope, you go down stream to-morrow, we shall have the pleasure of accompanying you."
"Very kind," replied the general.
"Not bashful," added the squire.
"We also are come," continued the stranger in the same free and easy tone, "to lay our humble offering upon the altar of the land of liberty, the happy asylum of the persecuted and oppressed. Who would not risk his best blood for the greatest of earth's blessings?"