Not one of these messengers ever reached Lord Rawdon. The perils of bearers of despatches at this time were such that they could only be conquered by more than ordinary devotion to duty. Fortunately an instance of such devotion has been preserved for us from the ranks of the Seventeenth. The case is that of a corporal, O’Lavery by name, who was especially selected to accompany a bearer of despatches on a dangerous and important mission. The two had not gone far before they were attacked, and both of them severely wounded. The man in charge of the despatch died on the road; the corporal took the packet from the dead man’s hand and rode on. Then he too dropped on the road from loss of blood, but sooner than suffer the papers to fall into the hands of the enemy, he concealed it by thrusting it into his wound. All night he lay where he fell, and on the following morning was found alive, but unable to do more than point to the ghastly hiding-place of the despatch. The wound thus maltreated proved to be mortal, and Corporal O’Lavery was soon past all human reward. But Lord Rawdon, unwilling that such gallant service should be forgotten, erected a monument to O’Lavery’s memory in his native County Down. On the 25th of April Cornwallis, having refreshed his army, quitted Wilmington and marched northward to Petersburg, [Sidenote: 20th May.] where he effected a junction with two bodies, amounting together to 3600 men, which had been despatched to reinforce him from England and New York. With these he crossed the Appomattox in search of Lafayette, and pursued him for some way north, destroying all the enemy’s stores as he went. The Americans were now, in spite of their continued resistance in South Carolina, in a distressed and desponding position; but just at this critical moment their hopes were revived by intelligence of coming aid from France. Clinton having discovered this by interception of despatches, and learned further that an attack on New York was intended, recalled half of Cornwallis’s troops to his own command, and thus put an end to further operations in the South. It is significant that Clinton begs in particular for the return of the detachment of the Seventeenth; evidently he counted upon this regiment above others in critical times. Thus for the moment operations in the South came to a standstill and Cornwallis retired to Yorktown.