"So long? I thought Mr. Stair was a later comer in Mecklenburg."

"He came eight years ago, as one of Tryon's underlings. Madge was even
then motherless; the same little wilful prat-a-pace she has ever been. I
would you knew her, Jack. 'Twould make this shiftiness of mine seem less
the thing it is."

"So you have stayed at home a-courting while others fought to give you
leisure," said I, thinking to rally him. But he took it harder than I
meant.

"'Tis just that, Jack; and I am fair ashamed. While the fighting kept to
the North it did not grind so keen; but now, with the redcoats at our
doors, and the Tories sacking and burning in every settlement, 'tis
enough to flay an honest man alive. God-a-mercy, Jack! I'll go; I've got
to go, or die of shame!"

He sat silent after that, and as there seemed nothing that a curst old
campaigner could say at such a pass, I bore him company.

By and by he harked back to the matter of his errand, making some
apology for his coming to me as the baronet's second.

"'Twas none of my free offering, you may be sure," he added. "But it so
happened that Captain Falconnet once did me a like turn. I had chanced
to run afoul of that captain of Hessian pigs, Lauswoulter, at cards, and
Falconnet stood my friend--though now I bethink me, he did seem
over-anxious that one or the other of us should be killed."

"As how?" I inquired.