In December 1781, Maj. Robert McLeroth and the 64th Regiment escorted newly arrived British army recruits of the Royal Fusiliers from Charleston to the High Hills of Santee when Col. Francis Marion, leading about 700 militiamen up the Santee River Road, surprised them near Halfway Swamp. McLeroth avoided an immediate battle by proposing a staged combat of twenty men on each side, then withdrew his troops north during the night toward Singleton’s Mill. After discovering the deception the next morning, Marion sent horsemen under Maj. John James in pursuit, and James’s men reached Singleton’s Mill, a large rice plantation and grist mill ten miles north, just ahead of the British, seized the buildings, and fired one volley before realizing that the Singleton family was ill with smallpox. The Whigs then abandoned the plantation to the British, and Marion moved his men back down the Santee Road the following day. Although British commanders in South Carolina were dissatisfied with McLeroth’s field performance, several Patriot sources testified to his uprightness and generosity, and after the skirmishing between Halfway Swamp and Singleton’s Mill he took wounded men from both sides to a tavern, paid for two weeks’ lodging, and left an army physician to care for them. When Marion learned what McLeroth had done, he told one of his officers that he now felt very much as he would if he were pursuing a brother to kill him.