"A lucky turn for me," I said; and then at second thought I would deny
the saying, though not for him to hear. But this was dangerous ground
again, and I clawed off from it like a desperate mariner tempest-driven
on a lee shore; asking him how he had learned the broadsword play, and
where he got the antique claymore.

He laughed heartily, and more like my care-free Dick, this time.

"Thereby hangs a tale. I told you how I was out with the Minute Men in
'76 at Moore's Creek, where we fought the Scotchmen. It was our first
pitched battle, and I opine it smelled somewhat of severity on both
sides--no quarter was asked, and the Tory MacDonalds fought like fiends
for King George, small cause as they had to love the House of Hanover."

"How was that?" I would ask, being as little familiar with the low
country settlements as any native-born Carolinian could be.

"They were expatriates for the Pretender's sake, many of them. Mistress
Flora's husband was one of the prisoners we took. But, as I was saying,
they were Tories to a man, and they fought wickedly. When it was over,
the prisoners would have fared hardly but for a woman. In the thick of
the fight, Mistress Mary Slocumb, of Dobbs, whose husband was with us,
came storming down upon the field, having rode a-gallop some forty-odd
miles because she dreamed her goodman was killed. She begged for the
prisoners, and so Caswell hanged only those who were blood guilty--these
and the house burners. A raw-boned piper named M'Gillicuddy fell to my
lot, and he is now my majordomo at Jennifer House; as honest a fellow as
ever skirled a pibroch."

"That was like you," I said; "to make a friend and retainer out of your