With the utmost apparent indifference to the dangers that beset them, the sergeant now applied himself to the care of restoring his rifle to a serviceable condition. With the aid of a small tool which he carried for such a use, he opened the breach and removed the ball: Butler's pistols were likewise put in order, and our travellers, being thus restored to an attitude of defence, turned their horses' heads into the thicket upon their left, and proceeded across the space that filled up the angle made by the two branches of the road; and, having gained that branch which they sought, they pressed forward diligently upon their journey. The path they had to travel was lonely and rugged, and it was but once or twice, during the day, that they met a casual wayfarer traversing the same wild. From such a source, however, they were informed that they were on the most direct road to Grindall's ford, and that the route they had abandoned would have conducted them to the Dogwood spring, a point much out of their proper course, and from which the ford might only have been reached by a difficult and tortuous by-way. These disclosures opened the eyes of Butler and his companion to the imminent perils that encompassed them, and prompted them to the exercise of the strictest vigilance. Like discreet and trusty soldiers, they pursued their way with the most unwavering courage, confident that the difficulty of retreat was fully equal to that of the advance. CHAPTER XVI. TORY TROOPERS, A DARK ROAD AND A FRAY. "By the whiskers of the Grand Turk, I have got the four points on you, bully Buff! High, low, jack and the game!" exclaimed Peppercorn. "You have luck enough to worry out the nine lives of a cat. That's an end to Backbiter, the best horse 'twixt Pedee and the Savannah. So, blast me, if I play any more with you! There, send the cards to hell!" roared out Hugh Habershaw, rising and throwing the pack into the fire. It was just at the closing in of night, when a party of ruffianly-looking men were assembled beneath a spreading chestnut, that threw forth its aged arms over a small gravelly hillock, in the depths of the forest that skirted the northern bank of the Pacolet, within a short distance of Grindall's ford. The spot had all the qualities of a secret fastness. It was guarded on one side by the small river, and on the other by a complicated screen of underwood, consisting principally of those luxuriantly plaited vines which give so distinct a character to the southern woodland. The shrubbery, immediately along the bank of the river, was sufficiently open to enable a horseman to ride through it down to the road which, at about two hundred paces off, led into the ford.