"Have you taken it one more time than you have forsworn it, Mr. Stair?"
"Laugh and ye will," he said, quite placably; "ye shall never laugh the
peetriotism out o' me. 'Tis little enough an old man can do, but the
precious cause o' liberty will never have to ask that little twice,
Captain Ireton."
Since he would ever be on the winning side, this foreshadowed good
tidings, indeed. So I would ask him straight what news there was.
"Have they not told ye? 'Tis braw news," he chuckled. "Whilst ye were on
your back, General Greene led Lord Cornwallis a fine dance all across
the prov--the state, I mean, crooking his finger at him and saying,
'Come on, ye led-captain of a tyrant king, and when I'm ready I'll turn
and rend ye.' And by the same token, that is juist what he did the other
day at Guilford Court House."
"A victory?" I would ask.
"Well, not precisely that, maybe; they're calling it a drawn battle. But
I'm thinking 'tis Lord Cornwallis that's drawn. He's off to Wilmington,
they say, and I'm fain to hope we've seen the last o' him and his
reaving redcoats in these parts."
His words set me in a muse. I could never make out what he would be at,
telling me all this. But he had an object, well-defined, and presently
it showed its head.
"Ye're the laird o' the manor, now, Captain Ireton, with none to gainsay
ye," he went on. "So I've come to give ye an account o' my stewardship.
I made no doubt, all along, ye'd come back to your own when ye'd had
your fling wi' the Old Worldies, and so I've kept tab o' the poor bit
land for ye.
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