The Tory Maid

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The Tory Maid, by Herbert Baird Stimpson

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Title: The Tory Maid
Author: Herbert Baird Stimpson
Release Date: February 26, 2007 [EBook #20678]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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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 envy of all that hard-riding country. I was hardy and skilled in all the outdoor sports and pastimes of my race and people, and being light in the saddle I often led the hardest riders and won from them the brush, while every creek for fifty miles up and down the broad Chesapeake, and even the farther shore as far as Baltimore, knew my canoe, and the High Sheriff himself was no finer shot than I.
You, who bask in the sunshine of long and dreary years of peace, who never hear the note of the bugle nor see the flash of the foeman's steel from one year's end to another, know not what it was to live in those stirring times and all the joy of the strife. You should have seen us then, when the whole land was aflame.
The fiery signal had come like a rush of the wind from the north, with the cry of the dying on the roadsides and fields of Lexington.
All along the western shore the men of Anne Arundel, of Frederick, and Prince George were mustering fast and strong. Then the Kentish men and those of Queen Anne and all the lower shore were mounting fast and mustering, while from the Howard hills came riding down bold and hardy yeomen.
Then, and as it has always been in the old province of Maryland,