it was in the autumn of the year '64, as i was coming of age, that my father made ready to send me to england. himself a conscience exile from episcopal virginia, and a descendant of those nottingham iretons whose best-known son fought stoutly against church and king under oliver cromwell, he was yet willing to humor my bent and to use the interest of my mother's family to enter me in the king's service.
accordingly, i took ship at norfolk for "home," as we called it in those days; and, after a stormy passage and overmuch waiting as my cousins' guest in lincolnshire, had my pair of colors in the scots blues, lately home from garrison duty in the canadas.
of the life in barracks of a young ensign with little wit and less wisdom, and with more guineas in his purse than was good for him, the less said the better. but of this you may like to know that, what with a good father's example, and some small heritage of puritan decency come down to me from the sound-hearted old roundhead stock, i won out of that devil's sponging-house, an army in the time of peace, with somewhat less to my score than others had to theirs.
it was in this barrack life that i came to know richard coverdale and his evil genius, the man francis falconnet. coverdale was an ensign in my own regiment, and we were sworn friends from the first. his was a clean soul and a brave; and it was to him that i owed escape from many of the grosser chargings on that score above-named.
as for falconnet, he was even then a ruffler and a bully, though he was not of the army. he was a younger son, and at that time there were two lives between him and the baronetcy; but with a mother's bequeathings to purchase idleness and to gild his iniquities, he was a fair example of the jeunesse dorée of that england; a libertine, a gamester, a rakehell; brave as the tiger is brave, and to the full as pitiless. he was a boon companion of the officers' mess; and for a time—and purpose—posed as coverdale's friend, and mine.
since i would not tell my poor dick's story to richard jennifer, i may not set it down in cold words here for you. it was the age-old tragic comedy of a false friend's treachery and a woman's weakness; a duel, and the wrong man slain. and you may know this; that falconnet's most merciful role in it was the part he played one chill november morning when he put richard coverdale to the wall and ran him through.
as you have guessed, i was coverdale's next friend and second in this affair, and but for the upsetting news of the tryon tyranny in carolina,—news which reached me on the very day of the meeting,—i should there and then have called the slayer to his account.
how my father who, presbyterian and ireton though he was, had always been of the king's side, came to espouse the cause of the "regulators," as they called themselves, i know not. in my youthful memories of him he figures as the feudal lord of his own domain, more absolute than many of the petty kinglings i came afterward to know in the german marches. but this, too, i remember; that while his rule at appleby hundred was stern and despotic enough, he was ever ready to lend a willing ear to any tale of oppression. and if what men say of the tyrant tryon's tax-gatherers and law-court robbers be no more than half truth, there was need for any honest gentleman to oppose them.
what that opposition came to in '71 is now a tale twice told. taken in arms against the governor's authority, and with an estate well worth receiving, my father had little justice and less mercy accorded him. with many others he was outlawed; his estates were declared forfeit; and a few days later he, with benjamin merrill and four more captivated at the alamance, was given some farce of a trial and hanged.
when the news of this came to me you may well suppose that i had no heart to continue in the service of the king who could sanction and reward such villainies as these of the butcher william tryon. so i threw up my lieutenant's commission in the blues, took ship for the continent, and, after wearing some half-dozen different uniforms in germany, was lucky enough to come at length to serviceable blows under my old field-marshal on the turkish frontier.
to you of a younger generation, born in the day of swift mail-coaches and well-kept post-roads, the slowness with which our laggard news traveled in that elder time must needs seem past belief. it was early in the year '79 before i began to hear more than vague camp-fire tales of the struggle going on between the colonies and the mother country; and from that to setting foot once more upon the soil of my native carolina was still another year.
what i found upon landing at new berne and saw while riding a jog-trot thence to the catawba was a province rent and torn by partizan warfare. though i came not once upon the partizans themselves in all that long faring, there were trampled fields and pillaged houses enough to serve as mile-stones; and in my native mecklenburg a mine full charged, with slow-match well alight for its firing.
charleston had fallen, and colonel tarleton's outposts were already widespread on the upper waters of the broad and the catawba. thus it was that the first sight which greeted my eyes when i rode into queensborough was the familiar trappings of my old service, and i was made to know that in spite of mr. jefferson's boldly written declaration of independence, and that earlier casting of the king's yoke by the patriotic mecklenburgers themselves, my boyhood home was for the moment by sword-right a part of his majesty's province of north carolina.
you are not to suppose that these things moved me greatly. as yet i was chiefly concerned with my own affair and anxious to learn at first hands the cost to me of my father's connection with the regulators.
touching this, i was not long kept in ignorance. of all the vast demesne of appleby hundred there was no roof to shelter the son of the outlawed roger ireton save that of this poor hunting lodge in the mighty forest of the catawba, overlooked, with the few runaway blacks inhabiting it, in the intaking of an estate so large that i think not even my father knew all the metes and bounds of it.
i shall not soon forget the interview with the lawyer in which i was told the inhospitable truth. nor shall i forget his truculent leer when he hinted that i had best be gone out of these parts, since it was not yet too late to bring down the sentence of outlawry from the father to the son.
it was well for him that i knew not at the time that he was gilbert stair's factor. for i was mad enough to have throttled him where he sat at his writing table, matching his long fingers and smirking at me with his evil smile. but of this man more in his time and place. his name was owen pengarvin. i would have you remember it.
for a week and a day i lingered on at queensborough, for what i knew not, save that all the world seemed suddenly to have grown stale and profitless, and my life a thing of small account. one day i would be minded to go back to my old field-marshal and the keeping of the turkish border; the next i would ride over some part of my stolen heritage and swear a great oath to bide till i should come to my own again. and on these alternating days the storm of black rage filled my horizons and i became a derelict to drive on any rock or shoal in this uncharted sea of wrath.
on one of these gallops farthest afield i chanced upon the bridle-path that led to our old hunting lodge in the forest depths. tracing the path to its end among the maples i found the cabin, so lightly touched by time that the mere sight of it carried me swiftly back to those happy days when my father and i had stalked the white-tailed deer in the hill glades beyond, with this log-built cabin for a rest-camp. i spurred up under the low-hanging trees. the door stood wide, and a thin wreath of blue smoke curled upward from the mouth of the wattled chimney.
then and there i had my first welcome home. old black darius—old when i had last seen him at appleby hundred, and a very grandsire of ancients now—was one of the runaways who made the forest lodge a refuge. he had been my father's body-servant, and, notwithstanding all the years that lay between, he knew me at once.
thereupon, as you would guess, i came immediately into some small portion of my kingdom. though darius was the patriarch, the other blacks were also fugitives from appleby hundred; and for the son of roger ireton there was instant vassalage and loyal service. but best of all, on my first evening before the handful of fire in the great fire-place, darius brought me a package swathed in many wrappings of indian-tanned deerskin. it contained my father's sword, and, more precious than this, a message from the dead. my father's farewell was written upon a leaf torn from his journal, and was but a hasty scrawl. i here transcribe it.
my son:
i know not if this will ever come into your hands, but it and my sword shall be left in trust with the faithful darius. we 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 from lord cornwallis's main, which was then well down upon the wateree, i could not guess. but for the secrecy and vigilance there were good reasons and sufficient. the patriot militia had been called out, and was embodying under general rutherford but a few miles distant near charlotte.
i had this information in guarded whispers from mine host of the tavern, and was but a moment free of the tap-room, when i first saw margery stair and so drank of the cup of trembling with madness in its lees. she was riding, unmasked, down the high road, not on a pillion as most women rode in that day, but upon her own mount with a black groom two lengths in the rear. i can picture her for you no better than i could for richard jennifer; but this i know, that even this first sight of her moved me strangely, though the witching beauty of her face and the proudness of it were more a challenge than a beckoning.
a blade's length at my right where i was standing in front of the tavern, three redcoat officers lounged at ease; and to one of them my lady tossed a nod of recognition, half laughing, half defiant. i turned quickly to look at the favored one. he stood with his back to me; a man of about my own bigness, heavy-built and well-muscled. he wore a bob-wig, as did many of the troop officers, but his uniform was tailor-fine, and the hand with which he was resettling his hat was bejeweled—overmuch bejeweled, to my taste.
something half familiar in the figure of him made me look again. in the act he turned, and then i saw his face—saw and recognized it though nine years lay between this and my last seeing of it across the body of richard coverdale.
"so!" thought i. "my time has come at last." and while i was yet turning over in my mind how best to bait him, the lady passed out of earshot, and i heard him say to the two, his comrades, that foul thing which i would not repeat to jennifer; a vile boast with which i may not soil my page here for you.
"oh, come, sir frank! that's too bad!" cried the younger of the twain; and then i took two strides to front him fairly.
"sir francis falconnet, you are a foul-lipped blackguard!" i said; and, lest that should not be enough, i smote him in the face so that he fell like an ox in the shambles.
