“And so you know General Washington?” he remarked smiling. “How does he look? We all air mighty proud of him down here. You see he comes from this part of the country. Jest over here in Virginny. A next door neighbor, you might call him.” And Peggy told all she could about General Washington, about such of his generals as she had met, the movements of the army, and everything connected with her stay in New York. Nor was this the last telling. North Carolina, while intensely patriotic as a whole and responding liberally to the country’s demand for troops and supplies, had heretofore had but one slight incursion from the British. For this reason they were eager to hear from one who had been in the midst of the main armies, and who seemed to come as a direct messenger from that far-off Congress whose efforts to sustain a central government were becoming so woefully weak. So Peggy found herself the centre of a little circle, composed of true and tried Whigs whose leaning toward the cause had more than once brought them into conflict with neighboring Tories. The cottage was situated on a small inlet of the ocean a few miles east of the Cape Fear River. A little distance from the main shore a low yellow ridge of sand hills stretched like a serpent, extending nearly the full length of the state on the ocean side, and making the coast the dread of mariners. These reefs were called “the banks.” The cottage was an unpretentious structure, consisting of but three rooms: the living-room or kitchen, a little chamber for Peggy, and a larger one occupied by the fisherman and his wife. But the fisherman had grown rich from wreckage. He had a number of beef cattle, and herded “banker ponies” by the hundred. Peggy grew fond of him and of the wife, and assisted in all the duties of the simple household. And so the time went by, and then there came to them rumors of the British fleet which had at last landed its forces for the besieging of Charleston. Anxiously the result was awaited. North Carolina rushed men to the city to help in its defense, for if that fell it was but a question of time until their own state would suffer invasion. At last, Henry Egan betook himself to Wilmington, thirty miles distant, for news. On his return his brow was overcast with melancholy. “Charleston is taken,” he announced in gloomy tones. “The whole of General Lincoln’s army air prisoners. The British air overrunning all South Carolina, plundering and burning the house of every Whig, and trying to force every man in the state to join their army. The Tories in both states air rising, and I tell you, wife, it won’t be long until our time comes.” “I am afraid so,” answered Mistress Egan, turning pale. “Oh, Henry, I wish we was up to mother’s at Charlotte. We would be safe up there.”