he stores collected in Old Albemarle Court-House, behind the
mountains; and on the 9th of June he ordered Tarleton to march thither
at daybreak, but recalled the order. He seems to have preferred waiting
till he could attack "the Marquis," as they all called Lafayette, to
advantage, to risking any considerable division in the mountains. And
as he lay, the road by which he supposed Lafayette must come down from
Raccoon Ford to protect Albemarle would expose him to a flank attack
as he passed the head of Byrd's River. It was at this time, that, in a
despatch which was intercepted, he wrote, "The boy cannot escape
me." Lafayette tells the story with great gusto. "The boy" found a
mountain-road which crossed farther west than that which he was expected
to march upon. It had been long disused, but he pressed through it,--and
at Burwell's Ordinary, in a neighborhood where our troops will find
villages with the promising names of Union Town and Everettsville, he
formed, on the 12th and 13th, in a strong position between Cornwallis
and the coveted magazines. Cornwallis affected to suppose that the
stores had been withdrawn; but, as he had given up Fredericksburg
that he might destroy these very stores, Lafayette had good reason to
congratulate himself that he had foiled him in the two special objects
of the campaign, and had reduced him to the business which he did not
like, of "stealing tobacco." For whatever reason, Cornwallis did not
press his enterprise. With a force so formidable and a leader so
enterprising before him, he did not care to entangle himself in the
passes of the Blue Ridge. We shall know from General Banks's column, by
the time this paper is printed, what are the facilities they afford for
cover to an enemy. Leaving the Albemarle stores, therefore, and the road
to Greene behind the mountains, he retraced his steps down the valley
of the James River, and, passing Richmond, descended as low as
Williamsburg, the point from which we have been tracing Lafayette's
movements.

Lafayette followed him with delight, not to say amazement. "The enemy is
so obliging as to withdraw before us," he writes,--and probably, to the
end of his life, he did not fully understand why Lord Cornwallis did so.
Their forces were numerically about equal, each commanding now rather
more than five thousand men. But of Lafayette's only fifty were cavalry,
a very important arm in that campaign, while Cornwallis had now eight
hundred men moun