"Oh, yes; 'twas little enough. She cut me off at the first word as if my speaking were a mortal sin. And when I would have tried again, she gave me a look to make me wince and broke out crying as if her heart would burst." I steadied myself as I could by the saddle horn and waited till he was up and we were moving on. Then I would say: "Truly, there is a barrier, Richard; if I promise you that I am going to Charlotte to remove it once for all, will you trust me and go about your affair with General Gates?" "Trust you, Jack? Who am I that I should do aught else? When I am cool and sane, I'm none so cursed selfish; I could even give her over to you with a free hand, could I but hear her say she loves you as I would have her love me. But when I am mad.... Ah, God only knows the black blood there is in the heart at such times." We rode on together in silence after that, and were come to the bank of the river before we spoke again. But here Dick went back to my warning, saying, whilst we let the horses drink: "'Tis patrolled on the other bank, you say?" "It was when I passed it a few days agone." "Then I will turn back and cross at Beattie's. 'Twill make you a risk you need not take--to have me with you." But I thought now that the upper ford might be guarded as well; and if there must be a cutting of a road through the enemy's outpost line for Dick, two could do it better than one. So I said: "No; we are here now, and if need be I can lend you the weight of a second blade to see you safe through." "And you with your head humming like a basket of bees, as I make no doubt it will?" I laughed. "I should be but a sorry soldier and a sorrier friend if I should let a love-tap with the flat of a blade make me fail you at the pinch." He reached across the little gap that parted us and grasped my hand. "By God!" he swore, most feelingly, "you are as true as the steel you carry, Jack Ireton!" "Nay," said I, in honest shame; "I do confess I was thinking less of my friend than of the importance of the errand he rides on." "But if there should be a fight, you will spoil your chance of coming peaceably to Charlotte and my Lord's headquarters." "If I am recognized--yes. But the night is dark, and a brush with the outpost need not betray me." At this he consented grudgingly, and we pushed on to the crossing. Now since this fording place of Master Macgowan's has marched into our history, you will like to know what the historians do not tell you: namely, how it was but a makeshift wading place, armpit deep over a muddy bottom from the western bank to the bar above an island in mid-stream, and deflecting thence through rocky shallows to a point on the eastern bank some distance below the island. 'Twas here that Lord Cornwallis got entangled some months later--but I must not anticipate.