"Your servant, ladies and gentlemen!" he said, with a swift bow and a flourish of his dragoon's hat. His eye rested on Elizabeth. "Who are you?" she demanded, coldly and imperiously, from the fourth step. "I'm Captain Peyton, of Lee's Light Horse," said he. CHAPTER IV. THE CONTINENTAL DRAGOON. The Peytons of Virginia were descended from a younger son of the Peytons of Pelham, England, of which family was Sir Edward Peyton, of Pelham, knight and baronet. Sir Edward's relative, the first American Peyton, settled in Westmoreland County. Within one generation the family had spread to Stafford County, and within another to Loudoun County also. Thus it befell that there was a Mr. Craven Peyton, of Loudoun County, justice of the peace, vestryman, and chief warden of Shelburne Parish. He was the father of nine sons and two daughters. One of the sons was Harry. This Harry grew up longing to be a soldier. Military glory was his ambition, as it had been Washington's; but not as a mere provincial would he be satisfied to excel. He would have a place as a regular officer, in an army of the first importance, on the fields of Europe. Before the Revolution, Americans were, like all colonials, very loyal to their English King. Therefore would Harry Peyton be content with naught less than a King's commission in the King's army. His father, glad to be guided in choosing a future for one of so many sons, sent Harry to London in 1770, to see something of life, and so managed matters, through his English relations, that the boy was in 1772, at the age of nineteen, the possessor, by purchase, of an ensign's commission. He was soon sent to do garrison duty in Ireland, being enrolled with the Sixty-third Regiment of Foot. He had lived gaily enough during his two years in London, occupying lodgings, being patronized by his relations, seeing enough of society, card-tables, drums, routs, plays, prize-fights, and other diversions. He had made visits in the country and showed what he had learned in Virginia about cock-fighting, fox-hunting and shooting, and had taken lessons from London fencing-masters. A young gentleman from Virginia, if well off and "well connected," could have a fine time in London in those days; and Harry Peyton had it.