ich they needed farther north.

The credit of beginning this kind of partisan warfare belongs chiefly to
two or three plain men, who did it simply because they loved their
country more than their ease.

The man who first began it was Justice Gaston--a white-haired patriot
who lived on a little stream called Fishing Creek, near Rocky Mount. He
was eighty years of age, and might well have thought himself too old to
care about war matters; but he was a brave man and a patriot, and the
people who lived near him were in the habit of taking his advice and
doing as he did.

When the news came that Tarleton had killed a band of patriots under
Colonel Buford in cold blood Justice Gaston called his nine sons and
many of his nephews around him. Joining hands, these young men promised
each other that they never would take the British oath, and never would
give up the cause, come what might.

Soon afterwards a British force came to the neighborhood, and all the
people were ordered to meet at Rocky Mount to enrol their names and take
the oath. One of the British officers went to see Justice Gaston, and
tried to persuade him that it was folly to refuse. He knew that if
Gaston advised the people to give up, there would be no trouble; but the
white-haired patriot told him to his face that he would never take the
oath himself or advise anybody else to do so.

As soon as the officer left the old man sent for his friends, and about
thirty brave fellows met at his house that night, with their rifles in
their hands. They knew there would be a strong force of British and
Tories at Rocky Mount the next day, but, in spite of the odds against
them, they made up their minds to attack the place, and when the time
came they did so. Creeping through the woods, they suddenly came upon
the crowd, and after a sharp fight sent the British flying
helter-skelter in every direction. This stopped the work of enrolling
the people as British subjects, and it did more than that. It showed the
patriots through the whole country that they could still give the
British a great deal of trouble, and after this affair many of the men
who had thought of giving up rubbed up their rifles instead, and formed
little bands of fighting men to keep the war going.

Another man who did much to stir up partisan warfare was the Rev.
William Martin, an old and pious preacher in the Scotch-Irish
settlements. These Scotch-Irish were very religious people, and their
preacher