Webster rose as he spoke. I rose. My lord had disappeared, but could still be heard in the passage speaking to some one. There were only Webster and I, Haldane and Burton left in the room. The civilian, thus summoned—and Webster’s voice had grown peremptory—turned back to us; a big clumsy figure of a man with his head sunk low between his shoulders, an enormous stock, and a thick queue. He looked more like a quaker than a planter, and he seemed to be an inveterate snuffer, for in the act of turning he had his box out again and a pinch raised to his nose. A heavy, good-natured-looking man he seemed; one who might have stepped out of a counting-house in ’Change Alley, and whose appearance would have surprised me more if I had not seen the queer wigs and queues in which the New Hampshire farmers, even in the backwoods, took the field. “Your servant, sir,” he said, civilly enough, now we had got him. “You come from the Tennessee slope, Mr. Burton, I understand?” I said. “There or thereabouts, sir,” he answered in the same tone. And he blew out his cheeks after a clownish fashion. “Do you know by any chance the man who took me?” I asked. “His plantation lies about four miles east of King’s Mountain and just over the colony line. It’s on Crowder’s creek or one of the small creeks west of the Catawba. They call the place the Bluff and it cannot be very far west of Wahub’s Plantation?” He pondered, a pinch of snuff at his nose. “Well, I am not sure, sir,” he said slowly, “I think I should know it.” “His name is Wilmer.” “Wilmer? Wilmer?” he muttered. “Umph?” “A tall, lean man,” I said, thinking to assist his memory, which, it was plain, worked sluggishly. “I should say a man of some standing in his district. He treated me well. He could not have treated me better or behaved more handsomely, indeed. In fact, I may say that he saved my life—” I stopped. I stared at the man, at his short wide face, which would have been jovial if it had not been so heavy, at his powdered head. His fingers, raised to convey the pinch of snuff to his nose covered the lower part of his countenance, but I noted that he had a shaky hand—some of the snuff fell on his stock. He puffed out his cheeks as he prepared to answer, but when he did so, it was only to repeat my last words. “Saved your life, sir, did he?” he murmured. “So I have heard. He took you into his house, I understand?” I stared at him. “That was so,” I said. Where had I seen some one—some one? My heart began to beat quickly. He sneezed. “Of Wilmer’s Bluff?” he muttered. “Well, I think I should know him, Major, I b’lieve I know him. And he saved your life, sir, did he? He saved your life?”