y had crossed the Pedee River and was pushing
southward. During its march a circumstance occurred which
gave great amusement to the trim soldiery. There joined the
army a volunteer detachment of about twenty men, such a
heterogeneous and woe-begone corps that Falstaff himself
might have hesitated before enlisting them. They were a
mosaic of whites and blacks, men and boys, their clothes
tatters, their equipments burlesques on military array,
their horses--for they were all mounted--parodies on the
noble war-charger. At the head of this motley array was a
small-sized, thin-faced, modest-looking man, his uniform
superior to that of his men, but no model of neatness, yet
with a flashing spirit in his eye that admonished the amused
soldiers not to laugh at his men in his presence. Behind his
back they laughed enough. The Pedee volunteers were a
source of ridicule to the well-clad Continentals that might
have caused trouble had not the officers used every effort
to repress it.

As for Gates, he offered no welcome to this ragged squad.
The leader modestly offered him some advice about the
military condition of the South, but the general in command
was clothed in too dense an armor of conceit to be open to
advice from any quarter, certainly not from the leader of
such a Falstaffian company, and he was glad enough to get
rid of him by sending him on a scouting expedition in
advance of the army, to watch the enemy and report his
movements.

This service precisely suited him to whom it was given, for
this small, non-intrusive personage was no less a man than
Francis Marion, then but little known, but destined to
become the Robin Hood of partisan warriors, the celebrated
"Swamp-Fox" of historical romance and romantic history.

Marion had appeared with the title of colonel. He left the
army with the rank of general. Governor Rutledge, who was
present, knew him and his worth, gave him a brigadier's
commission, and authorized him to enlist a brigade for
guerilla work in the swamps and forests of the State.

Thus raised in rank, Marion marched away with his motley
crew of followers, they doubtless greatly elevated in
dignity to feel that they had a general at their head. The
army indulged in a broad laugh, after they had gone, at
Marion's miniature brigade of scarecrows. They laughed at
the wrong man, for after their proud array was broken and
scattered to the winds, and the region they had marched to
relieve had become the