CHAPTER VII.
Campaign of 1781.
I saw the plundering British bands,
Invade the fair Virginian lands.
I saw great Washington advance
With Americans and troops of France;
I saw the haughty Britons yield,
And stack their muskets on the field.
Nothing material occurred to me till the month of February, nor any thing then very material. About the twentieth of that month I took it into my head to apply to my Captain for a recommendation to our Colonel for a furlough, that I might once more visit my friends; for I saw no likelihood that the war would ever end. The Captain told me that the Colonel was about sending a non-commissioned officer into Connecticut after two men belonging to our corps, who had been furloughed but had staid beyond the time allowed them, and that he would endeavour to have me sent on this business, and that after I had sent the delinquents to camp, I might tarry a space at home. Accordingly, I soon after received a passport, signed by the Colonel, in these terms, "Permit the bearer, , to pass into the country after some deserters, and to come back."—The time, "to come back," not being fixed, I set off, thinking I would regulate that as would best suit my own convenience.
When I arrived at home I found that my good old grandmother was gone to her long home, and my grandsire gone forty miles back into the country, to his son's, and I never saw him afterwards. My sister was keeping the house, and I was glad to see her, as I had not seen her for several years. There was likewise a neighbour's daughter there, who kept as much as she possibly could with my sister, and generally slept with her, whom I had seen more than once in the course of my life. Their company and conversation made up for the absence of my grand-parents, it being a little more congenial to my age and feelings. I staid at home two or three days, to recruit after my journey, when a man belonging to our company (going home on furlough) called and informed me that one of the men I was after had arrived at camp,
