Imagination, that merry, fantastic jade, will not let my pen be steady. A thousand pictures obtrude. Kitty, her head so curly, eyes so dark and soft, thrust from out the wagon's canvassed top, or again her snowy fingers playing in the cool waters of a running brook, when the team stops to feed and drink. Then Mr. Carlton, brave, resolute and the camp fire, the smell of broiled bacon, the dog on trail of a rabbit, the straw for seats, and weird firelight, and above all, the eternal stars of heaven.
But we must hasten, though the chronicle, which is reliable, states that it took five weeks to reach their destination in Burke County.
As they approached the Northern border of Wilkes County, the trees grew taller, and the red oak, the white oak, burch, and maple, the crimson honeysuckle, and wild violets and muscadine vines took the place of yellow jasmine, and moss and whispering pines.
It was indeed a forest primeval, a virgin soil, and a new land. So on the last day of their tiresome journey, early one morning, they came to a creek. There was no bridge, and it was plain that the stream had to be forded.
The wagons were moving slowly along. Katherine and her sister walking in front. A discussion arose: "What about the girls? Here! come Kitty!" or "Stop, Kitty! don't take off your slippers; you can't wade." About that time up rode a gallant revolutionary soldier named Captain John Freeman, who boldly said "I'll take Kitty" and in a trice he had the fair young lady behind him on his own horse, and the limpid waters of our clear Georgia stream were laying its flanks as he proceeded across the stream.
CHAPTER SECOND.
"The wagons have all forded the brook as it flows, and then the rear guard stays—
To pick the purple grapes that are hanging from the boughs."
—Edward Everett Hale.
While our heroine is riding along in the dewy morn of the day, and at the same time enjoying the beauties of nature and no doubt with her lithe young body leaning against the Captain, causing his heart to beat a double quick, we will go on with our narrative.