Silence fell on the camp.
All slept except the sentinels and one young man. He sat with his back to a tree, smoking a corn-cob pipe. He was not handsome; but the direct glance of his keen blue eye and his resolute expression, made him seem so in spite of a long thin face, high forehead somewhat narrow, and sandy-red hair falling low on his brow.
This young man was Andrew Jackson,—mischievous Andy of the Waxhaws,—now grown to be a clever, licensed, young lawyer. He was going with the emigrant train to Nashville in order to hang out his sign and practise on the frontier.
He sat there in the Wilderness, in the darkness, peacefully smoking. He listened to the night sounds from the forest. He was falling into a doze, when he noted the various hoots of owls in the forest around him.
“A remarkable country this, for owls,” he thought, as he closed his eyes and fell asleep.
Just then an owl, whose hooting had sounded at a distance, suddenly uttered a peculiar cry close to the camp.
In a moment, young Jackson was the widest awake man in Tennessee.
He grasped his rifle, and crept cautiously to where his friend Searcy was sleeping, and woke him quietly.
“Searcy,” said he, “raise your head and make no noise.”
“What’s the matter?” asked Searcy.