have made our ill-timed cast for liberty and it has failed, and
to-morrow I and five others are to die at the rope's end. I
bequeath you my sword--'tis all the tyrant hath left me to
devise--and my blessing to go with it when you, or another
Ireton, shall once more bare the true old blade in the sacred
cause of liberty._

_Thy father,_
_Roger Ireton._



You may be sure I conned these few brave words till I had them well by
heart; and later, when my voice was surer and my eyes less dim, I
summoned Darius and bade him tell me all he knew. And it was thus I
learned what I have here set down of my father's end.

The next day, all indecision gone, I rode to Queensborough to ascertain,
if so I might, how best to throw the weight of the good old Andrea into
the patriot scale, meaning to push on thence to Charlotte when I had got
the bearings of the nearest patriot force.

'Twas none so easy to learn what I needed to know; though, now I sought
for information, a curious thing or two developed. One was that this
light-horse outpost in our hamlet was far in advance of the army of
invasion--so far that it was dangersomely isolated, and beyond support.
Another was the air of secrecy maintained, and the holding of the troop
in instant readiness for fight or flight.

Why this little handful of British regulars should stick and hang so far