"The same you was so anxious about a few days back."
"Aye, unless my eyes fail me already, it was the boy."
"Well, I had a glimpse, as he came up the bank here from the ford, his horse dripping. It was dark still, and he only stopped to ask the road. I knew the voice, and the form--the lad is as slender as a girl--then he went by me, digging his horse with the spurs, and lying close. He had a Dragoon's cape flapping from his shoulders, but 'twas the boy all right. Ah! there go the guns up the bank. Now, perhaps, they'll let me take my fighting dogs across."
The way was open for me, at least, and I swung up into the saddle, and drove my horse down the slippery shore into the water. The stream was not deep, although the current flowed swiftly, and a moment later I had found Maxwell.
"Yes," he said to my first question, "we are going to fight, although it may not be anything more serious than skirmishing to-day. Washington has decided in spite of Lee, thank God, and we'll have a go at the Red-coats. Lafayette commands the advance, and Wayne will be up within a few hours. We are to skirmish forward toward Monmouth Court House; Clinton has turned that way."
"Yes; he just came through; one of Charles Lee's men, I understood--a blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked boy, who said his name was Mortimer. He had ridden from Cookstown, and was reeling in the saddle, but would go on. Your men are over there, Major, beyond the clump of timber. In my judgment we'll accomplish little to-day, for there is a heavy storm in those clouds yonder."
"How many men will we have when Wayne comes up?"
"About four thousand, with the militia. We are ordered to hang close to Clinton's left, while Morgan circles him to the right. 'Tis said the British have transports, at Sandy Hook, and are trying to get there; that was the word young Mortimer brought in."
The bath in the water seemed to have helped my horse, but I rode slowly up the valley toward the wood which served as my guide. Troops were strung along the sandy expanse of valley, the men mostly lying down, exhausted by their hard night's march. These were of my own brigade, men of the Pennsylvania and Maryland Line, uniformed in well-worn blue and buff. Already the sun beat down hot upon them, the air heavy and dead. No breath of breeze stirred the leaves, or grass blades, and most of those lying there had flung aside their coats. Over all the western and southern sky extended a menacing bank of clouds, slowly advancing, huge thunder-heads, already jagged with forked lightnings, pushing up into the blue. Before I reached the skirmishers, great drops of rain fell, and then a downpour, utterly blotting out the landscape. Lightning flashed, the thunder unremitting, the rain a flood, water leaped down the side of the hill in cascades, and, blinded, I drew my horse back into the slight shelter of the wood, and waited, gripping him by the bit. Men ran back down the hill, seeking shelter from the fury of it, and I bent my head, soaked to the skin. For the first time I realized how tired I was, every muscle aching with the strain of the long night's march, my head throbbing from the awful heat of the early morning. I sat down in the mud and water; my arm through the bridle rein, my head against the trunk of a tree, which partially protected my face from the beating rain. But there was no sleep possible.