These two men were Tarleton the dashing cavalryman, and Ferguson the rifleman, the skilled partisan leader.
Colonel Ferguson.
Patrick Ferguson, the son of Lord Pitfour, was a Scotch soldier, at this time about thirty-six years old, who had been twenty years in the British army.

He had served with distinction against the French in Germany, had quelled a Carib uprising in the West Indies, and in 1777 was given the command of a company of riflemen in the army opposed to Washington.

[Footnote: "Biographical Sketch or Memoir of Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Ferguson," by Adam Ferguson, LL.D., Edinburgh, 1817, p.11.The copy was kindly lent me by Mr.Geo.

H.Moore of the Lenox Library.] He played a good part at Brandywine and Monmouth.
At the former battle he was wounded by an American sharpshooter, and had an opportunity, of which he forbore taking advantage, to himself shoot an American officer of high rank, who unsuspectingly approached the place where he lay hid; he always insisted that the man he thus spared was no less a person than Washington.

While suffering from his wound, Sir William Howe disbanded his rifle corps, distributing it among the light companies of the different regiments; and its commander in consequence became an unattached volunteer in the army.