XXVII A KING'S TROOPER BECAME A WASTREL 287 XXVIII I SADDLE THE BLACK MARE 296 XXIX HAVING DANCED, WE PAY THE PIPER 309 XXX EPHRAIM YATES PRAYED FOR HIS ENEMIES 324 XXXI WE MAKE A FORCED MARCH 336 XXXII I AM BEDDED IN A GARRET 351 XXXIII I HEAR CHANCEFUL TIDINGS 361 XXXIV I MET A GREAT LORD AS MAN TO MAN 369 XXXV I FIGHT THE DEVIL WITH FIRE 376 XXXVI I RODE POST ON THE KING'S BUSINESS 382 XXXVII WHAT BEFELL AT KING'S CREEK 395 XXXVIII WE FIND THE GUN-MAKER 412 XXXIX THE THUNDER OF THE CAPTAINS 418 XL VAE VICTIS 432 XLI I PLAYED THE HOST AT MY OWN FIRESIDE 446 XLII MY LORD HAS HIS MARCHING ORDERS 454 XLIII I DRINK A DISH OF TEA 460 XLIV WE COME TO THE BEGINNING OF THE END 470 XLV WE FIND WHAT WE NEVER SOUGHT 480 XLVI OUR PIECE MISSED FIRE AT HARNDON ACRES 488 XLVII ARMS AND THE MAN 505 XLVIII WE KEPT TRYST AT APPLEBY 517 XLIX A LAWYER HATH HIS FEE 531 L RICHARD COVERDALE'S DEBT WAS PAID 549 LI THE GOOD CAUSE GAINS A CONVERT 562 LII BRINGS US TO THE JOURNEY'S END 573 CHAPTER I IN WHICH I WHET MY FATHER'S SWORD The summer day was all but spent when Richard Jennifer, riding express, brought me Captain Falconnet's challenge. 'Twas a dayfall to be marked with a white stone, even in our Carolina calendar. The sun, reaching down to the mountain-girt horizon in the west, filled all the upper air with the glory of its departing, and the higher leaf plumes of the great maples before my cabin door wrought lustrous patterns in gilded green upon a zenith background of turquoise shot with crimson, like the figurings of some rich old tapestries I had once seen in my field-marshal's castle in the Mark of Moravia. Beyond the maples a brook tinkled and plashed over the stones on its way to the near-by Catawba; and its peaceful brawling, and the evensong of a pair of clear-throated warblers poised on the topmost twigs of one of the trees, should have been sweet music in the ears of a returned exile. But on that matchless bride's-month evening of dainty sunset arabesques and brook and bird songs, I was in little humor for rejoicing.