“He should avoid a meeting until he knows his ground and is acquainted with the force before him. There is nothing to be gained by venturesome enterprises such as, I dare say, General Gates will attempt. It will but weaken him and unnerve his rank and file. De Kalb would have been a better man; he is accustomed to the warfare of petty European principalities, which is conducted with caution and no waste of men or supplies. I am sorry to hear this; the appointment of Gates was a mistake.” The fears for the reckless courage of Gates expressed by Marion were only too well founded. That hot-tempered officer came plunging through North Carolina, full-tilt, with the ambition, seemingly, like Cæsar to write a dispatch announcing in the same breath the sight of and the conquest of the enemy. The army commanded by General Gates, though small, was the best-equipped that the south had yet seen; they were well-clad in smart uniforms; their musket-barrels shone in the sun; their camp had all the neatness of a camp of trained soldiery; their artillery was heavy and capable of excellent service. Despite his rapid marches, Gates had the knack of keeping his men in good condition, and on the evening when Marion, with Tom Deering and Cole riding upon either side of him, and his nondescript band of woodsmen and fugitive militia at his heels, rode into it, the Continental camp was at its neatest and trimmest. The coonskin caps and wretched rags of the newcomers excited the jeers of the smart regular troops as their owners went down the road, between the line of camp-fires, toward the general’s tent. “If this is the sort of reinforcement South Carolina has to offer us,” cried a big sergeant of Virginia foot, “we’ll have to do their share of the fighting, too.” Tom Deering could not stand the laugh of contempt that greeted this, but reined up beside a company of the jeering infantry and allowed his comrades to trot by behind the unruffled Marion. “If you men of Virginia go as far as we of Carolina for the cause,” said he, “you’ll go to the mouth of the British cannon, and a little further.” “Well crowed, my bantam-cock,” laughed the big sergeant. “And how long have you been soldiering, may I ask?” Tom’s eyes flashed as he faced the circle of laughing infantrymen who had gathered about him at the prospect of sport; their laughter angered him, for he felt that it was uncalled-for and unjust. So he swept the big sergeant scornfully with his eye. “I was soldiering,” said he, “before you had pulled on that nice, clean uniform for the first time. I had served a gun at Fort Moultrie and been under fire in a score of other places, sergeant, while you were still driving bullocks in the Virginia hay-fields.” It was a fact well known to his comrades that the sergeant had, up to this time, never smelled gun-powder in actual battle; and when Tom finished speaking a roar of laughter went, directed at the big man; and he reddened angrily, and bit at his huge mustache.