"From South Carolina?" cried the Captain. "Too many tories there by half! But then you have some men there; yes, sir, some men, whom I call men! Sumpter, sir, and Marion, sir,--why I call such fellows _men_, sir! I like this swamp-fighting, too; I was brought up to it,--took my first lesson among red Delawares, and ended with Mingoes and Shawnees. A good tussle at Eutaw, too, sir, it was, by the lord!" exclaimed Captain Loring, warming into such a blaze of military ardour at the recollection, that he quite forgot the object of his delay, and the assassination of his kinsman into the bargain;--"a good tussle, (without saying any thing of my friend Morgan's rub-a-dub-dub at the Cowpens,)--a good tussle! And such glorious weather, too, when a man could fight and keep cool! Now I remember, that, at the fatal field of Braddock, ninth July, '55, it was the hottest work, what with the weather, what with the savages, what with the stupid cockney red-coats, that man ever saw,--an oven above, and a furnace all round; it was all blood and sweat, sir!--the wounded were boiled in their own gore. It was a day, sir, to make a man a man, sir,--it taught me to smell gun-powder! It was there, sir, I first looked in the face of George Washington,--a poor colonial buck-skin colonel then, but now, adzooks, the greatest man the world ever saw! Harkee, sir, have you served? have you smelt powder? have you heard a trumpet? have you ever fought a battle?" "Certainly, sir," replied the young man, with humour; "I have inflicted bloody-noses, and received them. I was quite a Hector at school; and, so long as you stop short of killing, I am a Hector yet. But I never could find any appetite in me for bullets and broad-swords; and as for a bayonet, I think it the most inhuman weapon in the world. Noble Captain, I am a non-combatant, a man of peace." "Hah!" cried the Captain, indignantly; "and how comes that? An able-bodied man, with your bleeding country calling on you, and no fight in you? Sir, let me tell you, sir, such a pair of legs should have been devoted to the service of your country, sir! Look you, sir, my son Tom Loring was only eighteen years old, when he fought his battle on the Brandywine; and a whole year before, he was ripe for a rub, as he often told me. How comes it, sir, you have grown out of your teens, and never faced an enemy? Zounds, sir, I was beginning to have a good opinion of you!" "There is no accounting for it, Captain, except"---- "Hark ye, Mr. What-d'ye-call-it," said the soldier, the good feelings with which he was beginning to regard the youth, giving place at once to contempt and indignation, "there is every thing in having the right sort of blood for these things, and you have no blood at all. I despise you, sir, and, adzooks, I believe you are some suspicious person after all, and very contemptible, for all of your red jacket.--Holloa, Dick, there! help me into the carriage."