“Well, if you wont;” said Dunbar, “we can do without you. There are four of us, and they’re but two.” “You mistake,” replied Coulter, still quietly, “they are three!” “How! who!” “Wagner, Long, and Richard Coulter!” “What, you! Will you put yourself against us? You go with the rebels, then?” “I go with the strangers; I don’t know much about the rebellion, but I think there’s good sense in what they say. At all events, I’ll not stand by and see them hurt, if I can help it.” “Two or three boys,” continued Dunbar, “will make no difference!” This was said with a significant toss of the head toward Coulter. The instincts of these young men were true. They already knew one another as rivals. This discovery may have determined the future course of Coulter. He did not reply to Dunbar; but, addressing his three companions, he said, calling each by his Christian name, “You, boys, had better not mix in this matter before it’s necessary. I suppose the time will come, when there can be no skulking. But it’s no use to hurry into trouble. As for four of you managing three, that’s not impossible; but I reckon there will be a fight first. These strangers may have weapons; but whether they have or not, they look like men; and I reckon, you that know me, know that before my back tastes of any man’s hickory, my knife would be likely to taste his blood.” Dunbar replied rudely for the rest; and, but that Coulter quietly withdrew at this moment, seemingly unruffled, and without making any answer, there might have been a struggle between the two rivals even then. But the companions of Dunbar had no such moods or motives as prompted him. They were impressed by what Coulter had said, and were, perhaps, quite as much under his influence as under that of Dunbar. They accordingly turned a cold shoulder upon all his exhortations, and the commissioners, accordingly, left the house of old Sabb in safety, attended by young Coulter. They little knew his object in escorting them to the dwelling of Bennett Carter, where they staid that night, and never knew the danger from which his prompt and manly courage had saved them. But the events of that night brought out Richard Coulter for the cause of the patriots; and a few months found him a second-lieutenant in a gallant corps of Thompson’s Rangers, raised for the defense of the colony. But the commissioners parted from Frederick Sabb without making any impression on his mind. He professed to desire to preserve a perfect neutrality—this being the suggestion of his selfishness; but his heart really inclined him to the support of the “goot King Jorge,” from whom his grants of land had been derived. “And what dost thou think, brother Fields,” said he to the parson, after the commissioners had retired.