The Sergeant touched his cap with marked respect.
“Should anything occur to detain us in our ride, let this packet be given to Mrs. Headley. Mind, Sergeant, certainly not before midnight.”
“Your command shall be obeyed, Mrs. Ronayne. Should you return before midnight, it will be found with me; if not, I shall at once carry it to Mrs. Headley.”
“Just so. Good by, Nixon!” and as she placed the packet in his possession, she pressed his hand, as if to signify that the proper execution of the commission was of some importance.
“What is it, Maria? what do you wait for?” asked Ronayne, reining in his horse to enable her to come up.
“Nothing. I am merely sending a trifling message to Mrs. Headley by Sergeant Nixon,” and then putting her horse into a canter, she joined her cavaliers, and pursued with them the road that led along the right bank of a branch of the Chicago river to the Hardscrabble farm.
[CHAPTER IV.]
You see this chase is hotly followed.
—Henry V.
The spot called Hardscrabble was distant about two miles from Fort Dearborn, and had been the scene of a recent and bloody tragedy. They who are familiar with the events that occurred during a different and earlier phase of this tale are aware that, not four months previously, the father of Mrs. Ronayne had, as well as a faithful domestic, been cruelly murdered there, during a period of profound peace, by a party of Winnebagoes, and that, on the removal of his body to the grounds of the cottage, near the fort, in which his wife and daughter resided, the house had been hermetically closed. The outrage upon Mr. Heywood had taken place early in April. It was now, as has already been said, the 7th of August, and within that period Mrs. Ronayne had drunk deeply of the cup of reciprocated wedded bliss, she had also known the anguish of the severance of every natural tie. Both her parents were buried near the summer-house, and, had it not been for the fervent love of her husband—a love that daily increased in purity and intensity—even the great strength of mind for which she was remarkable would have ill enabled her to endure the twofold shock. But, even with all his love, the natural melancholy of her character became tinged with an additional shade of seriousness, which, far from being displeasing, or detracting from the sweetness of her most expressive and faultless face, seemed to invest it with a newer and a holier charm. The perfection of her classic style of beauty given as Maria Heywood, may well justify a repetition here.