IN WHICH A PILGRIMAGE BEGINS


As you have guessed before you turned this page, the men who charged so
opportunely to cut me out of peril were my captors only in the saving
sense.

Their overnight bivouac was not above a mile beyond the glade of
ambushment. It was in a little dell, cunningly hid; and the embers of
the camp-fires were still alive when we of the horse came first to this
agreed-on rallying point.

Here at this rendezvous in the forest's heart I had my first sight of
any fighting fragment of that undisciplined and yet unconquerable
patriot home-guard that even in defeat proved too tough a morsel for
British jaws to masticate.

They promised little to the eye of a trained soldier, these border
levies. In fancy I could see my old field-marshal,--he was the father of
all the martinets,--turn up his nose and dismiss them with a
contemptuous "_Ach! mein Gott!_" And, truly, there was little outward
show among them of the sterling metal underneath.

They came singly and in couples, straggling like a routed band of
brigands; some loading their pieces as they ran. There was no hint of
soldier discipline, and they might have been leaderless for aught I saw
of deference to their captain. Indeed, at first I could not pick the
captain out by any sign, since all were clad in coarsest homespun and
well-worn leather, and all wore the long, fringed hunting shirt and
raccoon-skin cap of the free borderers.