first to do so. Now I know and I feel, though I expect you won't be so willing to believe it, that, after all, it's the poor man who is the best friend of his country in the time of danger. He doesn't reckon how much he's to lose, or what risk he's to run, when there's a sudden difficulty to get through with. He doesn't think till it's all over, and then he may ask how much he gains by it, without getting a civil answer."
"There's truth in what you say, Humphries, and we do the poor but slack justice in our estimation of them. We see only their poverty, and not their feelings and affections; we have, therefore, but little sympathy, and perhaps nothing more than life and like wants in common with them."
"That's a God's truth here, major, where the poor man does the fighting and the labour, and the rich man takes protection to save his house from the fire. Now, it's just so with this poor man Frampton. He was one of Buford's men, and when Tarleton came upon them, cutting them up root and branch, he took to the swamp, and wouldn't come in, all his neighbours could do, because the man had a good principle for his country. Well, you see what he's lost;—you can't know his sufferings till you see him, major, and I won't try to teach you; but if there's a man can look on him, and see his misery, and know what did it, without taking up sword and rifle, I don't want to know that man. I know one that's of a different way of thinking, and willing to do both."
"And I another!" exclaimed Davis, who had been silent in their ride hitherto.
"Is Frampton here in the swamp—and shall we see him to-night?" asked Singleton, curious to behold a man who, coming from the poorest class of farmers in the neighbourhood, had maintained such a tenacious spirit of resistance to invasion, when the more leading people around him and indeed the greater majority, had subscribed to terms of indulgence, which, if less honourable, were here far more safe. The sufferings of the man himself, the cruel treatment his wife had undergone, and her subsequent death, also contributed largely to that interest which, upon hearing his simple but pathetic story, the speaker had immediately felt to know him.
"We shall see him in an hour, major, and a melancholy sight it
