The lady was still in her weeds, and grief and care had thrown a pallor upon her cheek; but the watchfulness imposed upon her by the emergencies of the day, her familiarity with alarms, and the necessity for constant foresight and decisive action, had infused a certain hardihood into her character, that is seldom believed to be,—but yet in the hour of trial unerringly exhibits itself—an attribute of the female bosom. Her manners were considerate, kind, and fraught with dignity. She was the personation of a class of matrons that—for the honor of our country and of the human race—was not small in its numbers, nor upon trial unworthy of its fame, in the sad history of the sufferings of Carolina.
The evening of the day on which Mildred arrived at the mansion brought rumors of a brilliant exploit achieved by Marion; and more circumstantial accounts on the following morning confirmed the good tidings. The alert partisan had fallen upon the track of the freebooters who had been marauding on the confines of North Carolina, and whose incursion had expelled our travellers from Wingate's cabin. Marion had overtaken them before sunrise, on the bank of the Pedee, where they had been detained by reason of Peyton's successful removal of the boats. A short but most decisive combat was the consequence, and victory, as she was wont, had seated herself upon Marion's banner. The chieftain and his followers had, as usual, disappeared, and the whole country was in a state of agitation and dread; the one side fearing a repetition of the blow in some unlooked-for quarter, the other alarmed by the expectation of quick and bloody reprisal.
These events still more contributed to fortify Mildred's resolution to remain another day under the shelter of Mrs. Markham's friendly roof, before she would venture forth in the further prosecution of her journey.
Here, for the present, we must leave her.
CHAPTER XLIII.
OCCURRENCES AT MUSGROVE'S MILL.
She passed by stealth the narrow door,
The postern way also,
And thought each bush her robe that tore,
The grasp of a warding foe.—Joanna Baillie.
The month of September was more than half gone. The night had just set in, and the waxing moon shone forth from a clear heaven, flinging her rays upon the rippling surface of the Ennoree and upon the glossy leaves that flickered in the wind by the banks of the stream, when Mary Musgrove, with wary and stealthy pace, glided along the path, intricate with shrubbery, that led upwards immediately upon the margin of the river. For a full half hour had she toiled along this narrow way since she had stolen past the sentinel near her father's gate. The distance was not a mile; but the anxious maiden, pursued by her own fears, had more than once, in the fancy that she was followed, stopped in her career and concealed herself in the thick copse-wood, and listened with painful intensity for the footsteps of those whom her imagination had set upon her track. There was, however, no pursuit: it was the prowling fox or the raccoon whose leap had disturbed the dry and rotten branches that lay upon the ground; and Mary smiled with faint-heartedness at the illusions of her own mind. She arrived at last beneath the brow of a crag that jutted over the stream, and in the shade of one of the angles of the rock, she discerned the figure of a man seated upon the grass. She paused with a distrustful caution, as she challenged the silent and half-concealed person.