"Ole Billy Thornton's ole house," answered the youth.
"But this is not, I think, the road that poor Hercules intended me to take?" I added, interrogatively.
"Dar say he meant the waggon-road; but it is all de same," replied the lad. "Dey both come out close together, and dat ar gal jog her turn dis way. I see her, dough she were mighty quick." And he laughed with the peculiar laugh of his people.
"Then I cannot miss my way to the old place," I observed.
"Oh, dear, no," answered the boy; "only just follow de track; keep always de biggest; and when you ride 'cross de savannah, look where him very green. Don't you go dere, for he's very deep dere. But keep where him brown and bushy, and where you see ox or horse feet." His directions were very good, as I found afterwards; although I will confess that I had no idea at the time of the sort of place I was venturing into, called, and not without reason, "The Great Dismal Swamp." I am told that in the spring of the year, nothing can be more deceitfully beautiful than the aspect which it puts on. The whole ground, even in the most plashy places, is covered with flowers. The trees are literally robed and loaded with the yellow jasmine, the trumpet honey-suckle, and other climbing plants. The cedars and junipers mingle their darker colours with the light-green foliage of the spring; and the very snakes as they glide across the path, or curl among the branches, look as if they were masses of living gems. In the height of summer, or the beginning of autumn, the scene is very different. Still, however, there is something grand about it from its very gloom. A profound sense of loneliness came upon me as I rode on. I don't know what it was, or how to account for the feeling, but the sensation produced by the aspect of these woods was different from that of any other forest scenery through which I had passed in Virginia. Where patches of woodland, very often of considerable extent, had been scattered amongst the cultivated ground, one always felt that one should soon reach free air and human associations again; but here, it seemed as if one were at the end of man's domain--as if the ground one trod upon never had been, never could be, cultivated; that there was a bar, and a proscription, and a curse against it--that one was proceeding away from civilization, and tending towards nothing. The first half-mile was through dense, deep forest, with tall, thin trees, rising up so close together that they evidently had not room to glow; each struggling with his fellow, as, in too densely a crowded population, every man stinted his neighbour in his own struggle for life. Then came a track, where I know not what catastrophe seemed to have terminated this overcrowded contention. For three or four square miles, the scene was one of desolation and decay. Fallen trees, stunted bushes, low junipers, plashy pools, thickets of laurel and ivy, silver gleams of small ponds, scanty lines of savannah--here, a dried-up patch of black mud, cracked into deep fissures; there, an undrainable spot, where the horse sank above his knees at every step in slimy ooze; now, a tangled brake, where a hundred men might have concealed themselves; and now, a swampy piece, from the long grass of which a tall white bird would spring up and soar away,--such were the objects that presented themselves on every side; and when viewed from the rather more elevated ground, by which the track was approached, showed like a wild and dismal moor with here and there a clump of tall trees rising above the rest of the expanse, and a deep, lowering belt of forest in the distance, girding it in on every side. On I rode, however, my horse sometimes stumbling over the thorn-trees, sometimes sinking almost to his girths in the deep, black mud. The sun declining in the sky, and the gloomy aspect of everything round me, sank into my heart, and depressed my spirits. Oh, how closely allied in this mysterious state of being is the material and the moral--how susceptible is even the soul itself of the influences poured in upon it through the channels of the external senses! The memories of all that had been taking place during the last two days seemed to combine themselves with the gloomy features of the scene around me. Hope diminished, apprehension increased. Imagination triumphed over reason; and I felt as if I were going on towards sorrow and disappointment and misfortunes. Such gloomy fits have sometimes possessed me before; but it is man's privilege and his duty to triumph over them; and whenever I feel the shadow of the cloud, I try to nerve my heart to resist, and to call up faith and trust to support mere human resolution.
"There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow." "Not a hair of our head falls to the ground unnumbered." And if so, God is with us. Onward!
[CHAPTER XXXIII.]
The sun was approaching his hour of setting; and the scene, lately so dreary and desolate, was now resplendent with colours which defy all description. It was not merely the purple and gold with which, in the weakness of language, we are forced to designate the hues, which neither pen nor pencil can bring before the mind, but it was the sparkling vividness, the transparent splendour of those colours--making them as spirit compared to mere matter--which spread an atmosphere-like enchantment over the scene, changing its rude features, brightening its dull heaviness, glorifying its gloom, and giving startling variety to its monotony. It was like the wonderful power of imagination, seizing upon the most incongruous materials, and harmonizing them in the life-like light that streams from itself. The mind, still subject, like the skin of the cameleon, to the aspect of things round it, took a brighter tone from the changes of the sky. Suddenly, however, I heard, as it seemed to me, at some little distance, a voice calling. At first, I was hardly certain whether it was not the cry of some wild bird; but presently I distinguished clearly the tones of a human voice; and, reining in my jaded horse, I turned round and looked in the direction from which it seemed to proceed. Running my eye over the ground, I could perceive nothing for a moment or two; but there were so many stumps and bushes and broken trees, that a hundred men might have been near me in that dim and scattered light without my perceiving their proximity. Still, however, the voice called, and I thought I could distinguish the word, "Mas'r." Cautiously I turned my horse amongst the bushes, and rode on towards the spot from which the sound seemed to come; and I soon began to discern the outline of a figure sitting at the foot of a tall, conical cypress-tree, almost assuming the form of one of the beautiful cypresses of Eastern Europe, and perched upon a little knoll, rising above the rest of the Swamp. It was not Bessy's figure; but, with no light satisfaction as I drew near to her and more near, I made out the heavy outline of good aunt Jenny. No words can express the good woman's joy and satisfaction when she saw me; and my own was little less, for I knew that I should now have a clue, and that some light, at least, would be thrown upon the mystery which had kept my mind for so many hours in a state of terror and anxiety. Poor Jenny, however, was weak and exhausted--to such a degree even, that she could hardly speak in answer to my questions; and the first consideration was how to revive her failing strength. At the distance which I supposed we were from any human habitation, no food, of course, was to be procured: night was coming on fast, and there seemed no prospect but of her dying there actually of starvation; till suddenly I remembered the hunting-flask of brandy which I had brought from the house of the hapless Mr. Travis, and of which I had never thought since. It was still in the pocket of my jacket, and it proved indeed a most seasonable relief to the poor woman, who soon recovered sufficiently to be able to tell me, vaguely and confusedly, that some twenty minutes after I had left her and Bessy in the wood, a party of white men, headed by Colonel Halliday, had forced their way through the bushes and hurried them away, offering to lodge them securely in Jerusalem. At Bessy's request, the leader promised, she said, to leave two men on the spot to give me warning when I returned; and poor Jenny declared that she heard him herself give the order to that effect. When they reached the path, however, they found more men and horses there; and the party separated into two divisions. Everything was in confusion, the good woman said; and before they were well aware of what was happening, she and Miss Davenport were riding away with one division, while Colonel Halliday took another direction with the other. It was not till they had gone some hundred yards that either Bessy or herself perceived that old William Thornton was with their party. I need not enter into more details, as I shall have to speak of them more fully hereafter, and as the good woman's account was very confused; I learned, however, from her that Bessy and herself had been detained at Mr. Thornton's house all night, but kept separate from each other; that she, at least, had had no food, and that she had seen a party of three or four of aunt Bab's negroes who came to the house, civilly inquiring if Miss Davenport was there, fired at from the windows without the slightest provocation. Immediately after that, Bessy had been placed upon horseback against her will and carried away.
"They turned me out as soon as she was gone," said aunt Jenny, "without even a cup of cold water; but I knew very well where they took her, and so I came on after my darling. But you see I got faint, master, and thought I should die for want here in the Swamp.
"But what did they take her away for, Jenny?" I inquired. "Why did they not let her remain where she was?"