They dismounted, and Butler threw his cloak around his shoulders. Then, in a thoughtful, musing state of mind, he strolled slowly along the bank of the river, till he was temporarily lost to view in the thick shades and sombre scenery around him. Robinson, having secured the horses, sat himself down at the foot of the chestnut, unwilling to interrupt, by conversation, the anxious state of feeling which he had the shrewdness to perceive predominated in Butler's mind.
CHAPTER IV.
A MEETING OF LOVERS——SOME INSIGHT INTO THE FUTURE.
The twilight had subsided and given place to a beautiful night. The moon had risen above the tree tops, and now threw her level rays upon the broad face of the massive pile of rocks forming the Fawn's Tower, and lit up with a silvery splendor, the foliage that clothed the steep cliff and the almost perpendicular hill in its neighborhood. On the opposite side of the river, a line of beech and sycamore trees, that grew almost at the water's edge, threw a dark shadow upon the bank. Through these, at intervals, the bright moonlight fell upon the earth, and upon the quiet and deep stream. The woods were vocal with the whispering noises that give discord to the nights of summer; yet, was there a stillness in the scene which invited grave thoughts, and recalled to Butler's mind some painful emotions that belonged to his present condition.
"How complicated and severe are those trials"—such was the current of his meditations—"which mingle private grief with public misfortune: that double current of ill which runs, on one side, to the overthrow of a nation's happiness, and, on the other, to the prostration of the individual who labors in the cause! What a struggle have I to encounter between my duty to my country and my regard for those tender relations that still more engross my affections, nor less earnestly appeal to my manhood for defence! Upon the common quarrel I have already staked my life and fortune, and find myself wrapt up in its most perilous obligations. That cause has enough in it to employ and perplex the strongest mind, and to invoke the full devotion of a head and heart that are exempt from all other solicitude: yet am I embarrassed with personal cares that are woven into the very web of my existence; that have planted themselves beside the fountain of my affections, and which, if they be rudely torn from me, would leave behind—but a miserable and hopeless wreck. My own Mildred! to what sad trials have I brought your affection; and how nobly hast thou met them!
"Man lives in the contentious crowd; he struggles for the palm that thousands may award, and far-speeding renown may rend the air with the loud huzza of praise. His is the strife of the theatre where the world are spectators; and multitudes shall glorify his success, or lament his fall, or cheer him in the pangs of death. But woman, gentle, silent, sequestered—thy triumphs are only for the heart that loves thee—thy deepest griefs have no comforter but the secret communion of thine own pillow!"
Whilst Butler, who had now returned beneath the cliff of the Fawn's Tower, was absorbed in this silent musing, his comrade was no less occupied with his own cares. The sergeant had acquired much of that forecast, in regard to small comforts, which becomes, in some degree, an instinct in those whose profession exposes them to the assaults of wind and weather. Tobacco, in his reckoning, was one of the most indispensable muniments of war; and he was, accordingly, seldom without a good stock of this commodity. A corn cob, at any time, furnished him the means of carving the bowl of a pipe; whilst, in his pocket, he carried a slender tube of reed which, being united to the bowl, formed a smoking apparatus, still familiar to the people of this country, and which, to use the sergeant's own phrase, "couldn't be touched for sweetness by the best pipe the very Queen of the Dutch herself ever smoked; and that"—he was in the habit of adding—"must be, as I take it, about the tenderest thing for a whiff that the Dutchman knowed how to make."
A flint and steel—part also of his gear—now served to ignite his tobacco, and he had been, for some time past, sedately scanning the length and breadth of his own fancies, which were, doubtless rendered the more sublime by the mistiness which a rich volume of smoke had shed across his vision and infused into the atmosphere around his brain.