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[Illustration]




The
Tory Maid

By
HERBERT BAIRD
STIMPSON


New York
Dodd, Mead and Company

[Illustration: (decorative borders)]




Copyright, 1898, by H. B. STIMPSON.




_To
Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Hall Harrison
this volume
is affectionately inscribed by
the Author_




CONTENTS

CHAPTER                             PAGE

I. WE START FOR THE WAR                1

II. WE MEET THE MAID                  10

III. A FLASH OF STEEL                 24

IV. THE RED COCKADE                   34

V. SIR SQUIRE OF TORY DAMES           44

VI. A TALE IS TOLD                    55

VII. THE DEFIANCE OF THE TORY         68

VIII. THE BLACK COCKADE               77

IX. THE RED TIDE OF BLOOD             89

X. THE HARRYING OF THE TORY          107

XI. THE COUNCIL OF SAFETY            118

XII. THE VETO OF A MAID              132

XIII. THE GREETING OF FAIR LIPS      146

XIV. THE RETURN OF THE TORY          156

XV. THE FLAG OF TRUCE                166

XVI. THE BALL OF MY LORD HOWE        176

XVII. AN EXCHANGE OF COURTESIES      187

XVIII. THE CROSSING OF SWORDS        196

XIX. THE SANDS OF MONMOUTH           206

XX. IN THE LINES OF THE ENEMY        222

XXI. THE PASSING OF YEARS            230

XXII. THE COMING OF THE MAID         238




The Tory Maid




CHAPTER I

WE START FOR THE WAR


I, James Frisby of Fairlee, in the county of Kent, on the eastern
shore of what was known in my youth as the fair Province of Maryland,
but now the proud State of that name, growing old in years, but hearty
and hale withal, though the blood courses not through my veins as in
the days of my youth, sit on the great porch of Fairlee watching the
sails on the distant bay, where its gleaming waters meet the mouth of
the creek that runs at the foot of Fairlee. A julep there is on the
table beside me, flavoured with mint gathered by the hands of John
Cotton early in the morning, while the dew was still upon it, from the
finest bank in all Kent County.

So with these old friends around me, with the julep on my right hand
and the paper before me, I sit on the great porch of Fairlee to write
of the wild days of my youth, when I first drew my sword in the Great
Cause. To write, before my hand becomes feeble and my eyes grow dim,
of the strange things that I saw and the adventures that befell me, of
the old Tory of the Braes, of the fair maid his daughter, and of the
part they played in my life during the War of the Deliverance. To
write so that those who come after me, as well as those who are
growing up around my knees, may know the part their grandfather played
in the stirring times that proclaimed the birth of a mighty nation.

The first year of the great struggle, ah, me! I was young then, and
the wild blood was in my veins. I was broad of shoulder and long of
limb, with a hand that gripped like steel and a seat in the saddle
that was the