Then, I promise you, my dears, it was neck or nothing, with the devil to take the hindmost. Away we sped toward the near-by river, spurring our wearied beasts as men who ride for life, with a dozen troopers so close upon us that when I glanced over my shoulder the foremost of the redcoat riders was having his face well bespattered with the mud from my horse's heels. 'Twas touch and go, but happily, as I have said, the river was at hand. We came to the high bank some hundred yards above the fording place, and lacking Dick's example to shame me to the braver course, I fear I should have recoiled at the brink. But when the lad sent his horse without the missing of a bound far out over the eddying flood, I shook the reins on the sorrel's neck, gave him the word and shut my eyes. After all, it was nothing worse than a cold plunge, with a few pistol bullets to spatter harmlessly around us when we came up for air. Moreover, there were the camp-fires of Davidson's men on the farther bank to encourage us; and so swimming and wading by turns we got across in time to give the alarum. As you would guess, there was a mighty stir on our side of the river when we had splashed ashore and got our news well born. As it turned out, General Davidson's main camp was a good half-mile back from the river in one of the outfields of Appleby Hundred. So it chanced there were upon the spot only brave Joe Graham and his fifty riflemen to dispute the passage of an army. What was done at Macgowan's Ford in the gray of the morning of February first, 1781, has become a page in our history. But I protest that not any of the chroniclers do even-handed justice to the little band of patriot riflemen doing their utmost to hold a hundred-to-one outnumbering host in check. 'Twas a fine sight, be the onlooker Whig or Tory. The Guards, led by the fiery Irishman, O'Hara, took the water first, the men crowding shoulder to shoulder to brace against the sweep of the current which, on the western side of the stream, was little less than a mill-tail for swiftness. After them came the foot and horse in solid squares, and always with more to follow. None the less, our little handful did not blanch; and when the Guards in midstream held straight across instead of bearing to the right as the ford ran, a shout went up on our side and the fifty hastened up from the ford-head as one man to face the enemy squarely. Now it was that the brown-barreled rifles began to crack and spit fire; and I do think if we had had our other two hundred and fifty out of that back field on the manor lands, we might at least have made the wading redcoats hurry a little. Indeed, as it was, the van of the Guards broke here and there, and we could hear O'Hara berating his men as only a battle-mad Irishman can, with blarneyings and curses intermingled.