Of the parting with my mother that noon I cannot speak, even at this late day, so painful was it. I can see now her pale face as she stood on the veranda watching me walk away, doing my best not to look back upon that mournful picture, and yet turning my head again and again despite all efforts to the contrary. Unkind though it may sound for me to say so, I must confess to a feeling of actual relief when a turn of the road shut out from my view the house and the dear, mournful figure on the threshold. Once that had been blotted from my vision by distance I quickened my pace, and with every yard traversed on the road to York did my courage revive, until when I had arrived where it was necessary to put on an appearance of idle curiosity and total disregard as to the wasting of time, I felt almost as if I could work out alone and unaided this plan which we had formed to outwit the officer who represented the king. It must seem strange to have one claim that at such a time, when my Lord Cornwallis's army was penned up so thoroughly by the French fleet to the seaward and Lafayette's forces to the landward, that a lad like me could wander at will inside the encampment. Soldiers not familiar with what was done in Virginia at that day, might say it would be an absolute impossibility for even a lad like myself to pass through the lines unchallenged, because Lord Cornwallis knew well that a great number of us in Virginia were those whom he called rebels, and I was of sufficient age and intelligence to carry information to the Americans. Yet it is true that on this day I saw idlers from plantations on both the York and the James rivers lounging around the British outer works, or passing the sentinels here and there along the line of entrenchments facing landward, without being challenged, or without hindrance in any form, and I, as a matter of course, followed these curious ones who would with their own eyes measure the strength of the king as it was displayed in Virginia. Like them I entered the village with no one to say me nay. Because it did not seem prudent to go directly to old Mary's cabin, I wandered around through the village, gaping at this or that, and once feasting my eyes with a view of Silver Heels as she stood at the stable line knee-deep in sweet straw, munching her hay as contentedly as if she had been in her own box on the Hamilton plantation. Then I went my way to old Mary's cabin, seeing the black, wrinkled face of Uncle 'Rasmus at the window while I was yet some distance away. Hearing my footsteps he looked up with a smile of pleasure and of welcome, and I understood there was naught to hinder my entering, therefore flung the door boldly open and walked in to find myself in the embrace of the old man, who petted and fondled me as if I had been down into the very jaws of death, and was come back only through my own brave exertions.