quarters of whom are Tories. And now I ask you, can
these separate handfuls of mixed descent unite? And, if that were
possible, can they stand for one day, one hour, against the trained
troops of England?"

"God knows," I said.

VI

DAWN

I had stepped from the dining-hall out to the gun-room. Clocks in the
house were striking midnight. In the dining-room the company had now
taken to drinking in earnest, cheering and singing loyal songs, and
through the open door whirled gusts of women's laughter, and I heard the
thud of guitar-strings echo the song's gay words.

All was cool and dark in the body of the house as I walked to the front
door and opened it to bathe my face in the freshening night. I heard the
whippoorwill in the thicket, and the drumming of the dew on the porch
roof, and far away a sound like ocean stirring--the winds in the pines.

The Maker of all things has set in me a love for whatsoever He has
fashioned in His handiwork, whether it be furry beast or pretty bird, or
a spray of April willow, or the tiny insect-creature that pursues its
dumb, blind way through this our common world. So come I by my love for
the voices of the night, and the eyes of the stars, and the whisper of
growing things, and the spice in the air where, unseen, a million tiny
blossoms hold up white cups for dew, or for the misty-winged things that
woo them for their honey.

Now, in the face of this dark, soothing truce that we call night, which
is a buckler interposed between the arrows of two angry suns, I stood
thinking of war and the wrong of it. And all around me in the darkness
insects sang, and delicate, gauzy creatures chirked and throbbed and
strummed in cadence, while the star's light faintly silvered the still
trees, and distant monotones of the forest made a sustained and steady
rushing sound like the settling ebb of shallow seas. That to my
conscience I stood committed, I could not doubt. I must draw sword, and
draw it soon, too--not for Tory or rebel, not for King or Congress, not
for my estates nor for my kin, but for the ancient liberties of
Englishmen, which England menaced to destroy.

That meant time lost in a return to my own home; and yet--why? Here in
this county of Tryon one might stand for liberty of thought and action
as stanchly as at home. Here was a people with no tie or sympathy to
weld them save that common love of liberty--a scattered handful of
races, without leaders, without resources, men