104, 105 .-- In this affair, as in numerous others, Marion's great knowledge of the militia service, and of the peculiar people with whom he sometimes had to deal, enabled him to relieve himself with little difficulty from troublesome companions.

Of these he necessarily had many; for the exigencies of the country were such that patriotism was not permitted to be too nice in the material which it was compelled to employ.

The refugees were from various quarters--were sometimes, as we have seen, adopted into his ranks from those of the defeated Tories, and were frequently grossly ignorant, not only of what was due to the community in which they found themselves, but still more ignorant of the obligations of that military law to which they voluntarily put themselves in subjection.

Marion's modes of punishment happily reached all such cases without making the unhappy offender pay too dearly for the sin of ignorance.

On one occasion, Horry tells us that he carried before him a prisoner charged with desertion to the enemy.