All was cool and dark in the body of the house as I walked to the front door and opened it to bathe my face in the freshening night. I heard the whippoorwill in the thicket, and the drumming of the dew on the porch roof, and far away a sound like ocean stirring--the winds in the pines. The Maker of all things has set in me a love for whatsoever He has fashioned in His handiwork, whether it be furry beast or pretty bird, or a spray of April willow, or the tiny insect-creature that pursues its dumb, blind way through this our common world. So come I by my love for the voices of the night, and the eyes of the stars, and the whisper of growing things, and the spice in the air where, unseen, a million tiny blossoms hold up white cups for dew, or for the misty-winged things that woo them for their honey. Now, in the face of this dark, soothing truce that we call night, which is a buckler interposed between the arrows of two angry suns, I stood thinking of war and the wrong of it. And all around me in the darkness insects sang, and delicate, gauzy creatures chirked and throbbed and strummed in cadence, while the star's light faintly silvered the still trees, and distant monotones of the forest made a sustained and steady rushing sound like the settling ebb of shallow seas. That to my conscience I stood committed, I could not doubt. I must draw sword, and draw it soon, too--not for Tory or rebel, not for King or Congress, not for my estates nor for my kin, but for the ancient liberties of Englishmen, which England menaced to destroy. That meant time lost in a return to my own home; and yet--why? Here in this county of Tryon one might stand for liberty of thought and action as stanchly as at home. Here was a people with no tie or sympathy to weld them save that common love of liberty--a scattered handful of races, without leaders, without resources, menaced by three armies, menaced, by the five nations of the great confederacy--the Iroquois. To return to the sea islands on the Halifax and fight for my own acres was useless if through New York the British armies entered to the heart of the rebellion, splitting the thirteen colonies with a flaming wedge. At home I had no kin to defend; my elder brother had sailed to England, my superintendent, my overseers, my clerks were all Tory; my slaves would join the Minorcans or the blacks in Georgia, and I, single-handed, could not lift a finger to restrain them. But here, in the dire need of Tryon County, I might be of use. Here was the very forefront of battle where, beyond the horizon, invasion, uncoiling hydra folds, already raised three horrid, threatening crests.