“Your anxiety is very natural, sir, and we share it.”
“Did she know that I was in the neighborhood? Did any one inform her?”
“We cannot tell whether she knew of your presence here. We did not tell her, for, as I said, she made no inquiries, and there was a reserve about her despair that shut itself in from all interference. Indeed it would be scarcely doing justice to her look of deep sorrow, to say that she was the most hopeless looking human being I ever saw in my life. She seemed like one who had seen her last hope go down.”
“Merciful God!”
“We used every method, except force, to prevent her leaving us, though we were impressed with the idea that she was going to you. And after her departure, in consulting together, we were half sorry that we had not essayed gentle coercion, for we all suspected that the lady’s reason was clouded.”
“Great God! I have driven her to madness—perhaps to death!” thought Archer Clifton, but then he exerted self-control enough to conceal the depths and extent of his anxiety, and asked, “What road did she take?”
“The North-west road, sir, which branches off towards Mr. Perry’s a quarter of a mile up, which was one of our reasons for supposing that she had gone to join you.”
Taking a hasty leave of the family, Major Clifton remounted his horse, and rode furiously up the road, meeting General Conyers and Frank, who had lagged behind on their return home. Stopping them, he communicated what had happened, but concealed his worst fears, and merely said that he presumed that Catherine had left for her Virginia home, in ignorance of his liberation, and his presence in the neighborhood, and that he wished, if possible, to overtake her, before she had proceeded far upon her road. Frank immediately turned rein to accompany him, while General Conyers, with many expressions of regret and concern, took leave of them, to return to Greenwood, and explain their absence.
The road lay for many miles through a dense forest, and they galloped onward for hours without meeting a single traveler or seeing a solitary house. Near the outskirts of the forest they came upon a party of stragglers, whom they judged to be deserters from the British army. But these men, when questioned, gave cautious and unsatisfactory answers—sulkily insisting that no lady riding alone had passed that way. They next inquired of some field laborers, who were stacking grain a little farther on. They replied that a lady in a dark riding-dress, riding on a bay horse, and a boy, mounted on a white mare, attended her. Perhaps this was Catherine, and her attendant some chance passenger. They questioned more particularly, and the description given answered to her personal appearance. They asked what road she had taken, and being told “straight ahead,” they set off in a gallop. A few miles further on they again inquired, and were told that such a lady, attended by a boy, had passed about an hour before. Full of hope, they put spurs to their horses and hurried on, congratulating themselves that they were gaining on her so fast.
At length they reached a school-house in the woods, where, tied to a fence, they saw the bay horse, with a side-saddle, and a white pony, with a boy’s saddle. Dismounting quickly, Captain Fairfax hastened to the school-room door, and inquired of the master to whom the animal belonged?