“Come on, then,” he commanded. “Follow me. Don’t make any noise. Don’t speak. Watch me. Don’t fire till I say the word.” They crept around the Blue House like Indians, testing every twig lest it snap, and feeling their way in the darkness. Suddenly a shot rang out in the early morning air. A sentinel on the other side of the house must have seen the lieutenant’s men. The British soldiers, roused from a sound sleep, jumped about, peering this way and that in the darkness. No one knew what had happened, or what would happen next. The officers came tumbling out, swearing and yelling. As the Americans came rushing in from all sides, shouting and shooting, the British thought they were attacked by an army instead of by thirty guerrillas. Marion’s men grabbed the rifles of the British soldiers, shooting some and knocking others down. Some of the British shouted, “Quarter!” and General Marion ordered his men to stop firing. There was a wholesale surrender, and the hundreds of American prisoners were set free. Many of them joined Marion’s men. When the British saw how they and their prisoners had been taken in, ten to one, they looked sheepish. But the British leader, the bullying Colonel Tarleton, had made his escape. His motto seemed to be-- “He who fights and runs away Will live to fight another day.” He ran away, at least, though he did not do any fighting first. Five months after the battle of Camden, there was another battle at Cowpens. The British army, commanded by Tarleton, was only a little larger than the American. The redcoats were so badly beaten that they lost over nine hundred men, while the American loss was only seventy-two. One day, not long after, Tarleton was bullying a southern woman in her home, where he and some of his officers were quartered. There was, on the American side, a Colonel Washington, a distant relative of the commander-in-chief. In his insulting way, Tarleton asked, when the lady said this officer was a relative of hers: “What does Colonel Washington look like? I have never had the pleasure of meeting him.” “You might have seen him,” said the lady, sweetly, “if you had _looked behind you_ at the Battle of Cowpens!” This polite way of calling him a coward made Tarleton very angry, but he was no match in wit for a brave and brilliant southern woman. Though many of the wealthiest people of the south were Tories, some of them were true patriots. A widow named Motte had just built a beautiful home on a hilltop, and had furnished it elegantly, when the British decided that it would make a fine fort, and promptly took possession of it. General Marion and his guerrilla band surrounded the mansion and told Mrs. Motte, who was then staying in a neighbor’s house, that if he could set her house afire he could “smoke out” the British and capture them. That woman patriot was glad to sacrifice her lovely home for the good of her country; so Marion burned down the mansion and made the redcoats his prisoners.