We reached Wills Creek on the 18th, as Morris said, the worst-beaten army that had not been in battle. Colonel Dunbar did not require my aid, and my general being dead, my service as a volunteer was at an end. The march to the settlements was most disgraceful――all in cowardly haste to get out of the wilderness. I am satisfied that no troops are so given to pillage as a retreating army, and certainly none was ever worse conducted by the officers or more disorderly than Colonel Dunbar’s force. The settlers and outlying farms near Fort Cumberland suffered much; men and women were misused, and chickens and cattle stolen. I heard afterwards that in their march through Pennsylvania Dunbar’s men plundered and insulted the farmers still worse, and were quite enough, Mr. Franklin said, to put us out of all patience with such defenders. I bade good-by to the aides of the general, and would have had Orme and Morris go home with me to be cared for by Dr. Craik, but they preferred to go on to Philadelphia. They were much dispirited, but had only warm praise for my Virginia rangers. I was in no better humour, and felt, as I rode away, that we were on the edge of an awful crisis for the border counties. The favourable sentiments Sir John St. Clair and Colonel Burton were pleased to express respecting me could not but be pleasing; but the situation of our affairs was, to my mind, so serious as to put me into one of my melancholic moods and to make me feel, as I often did in the greater war, that, what with want of patriotism and lack of spirit, only that Providence in which I have always trusted could carry us through a great peril. As usual, a brisk ride jolted me into a more hopeful state of mind. I lay for a day at Winchester in a poor tavern, cared for by the general’s man, Bishop. There, to my comfort, came Lord Fairfax, who had the kindness to bring with him a good horse, which I was the better pleased to have because what became of the horse the general would have had me have I was never able to hear. His lordship insisted that I rest at Greenway Court until I was more fit to travel. I had here many letters; one said that I was given up for killed, and there was come a long story about my dying speech. My mother was in a sad worry about me, and when she received my letter contradicting my death, and that I had never composed any dying speech, she declared I was always making her anxious and had no right to distress her by doing things that gave her occasion to think I was dead. His lordship overcame my objections, and I remained with him at the court several days, well pleased to be at rest.