“Your strength is not sufficient for your purpose, Anna,” said her father, noticing how nervously she clung to him. “The way will be long and solitary for a tender child like you! Will not my daughter return now to a home, that will afford her still a shelter at least?”
“And would not the way seem longer and darker to my father, if his only child were behind him? Think not because I tremble a little now at first that my heart is weak and cowardly. I have never before walked in the street at midnight, you know, and every rustle seems a king’s officer to me.”
“Bless you, my darling,” exclaimed her father. “The blood of the Temple’s is in your veins, warm and noble; I cannot bear to see it chilled by misfortune.”
“I have no regrets for the world we are leaving behind save on your account, my dearest father; on the contrary, I feel it will be charming to dwell alone in the great forest of the West, where the fetters of fashion, pride and ambition will cease to enthral, and we may learn of the great Creator by the infinity of his works, instead of the multitude of man’s words.”
Thus did the brave girl attempt to cheer the desponding spirits of her father as they moved forward amid the darkness of their solitary way. They directed their course northward, and although they were in the main road, the “woods of centuries” were all around them, and their giant shadows seemed like some spectral army gathered in the gloom of night.
The morning dawned on the little band nearly ten miles from the city, and although they had two or three times paused for a little rest by the wayside, it found them weak and weary; but the spot where they were to turn aside and wait for their wagon and refreshments was near, and they pressed forward. Their stopping-place was a few hundred yards from the road-side—a beautiful spot, by a spring of fresh water, where hunting parties often stopped to regale themselves with a dinner of game, or at least, to quaff a drink of water from the spring. Carle had often been there, and had described the spot so minutely it could not be mistaken; and when at length they seated themselves, and Judy took from her pocket some cakes, which, woman-like, she had been provident enough to bring along with her, their drooping spirits revived, and they ate the morsel cheerfully and drank from the spring, for they were faint as well as weary.
It was a bright morning of early autumn! The breath of summer yet lingered in the air, though the mists were on the hill-tops, and the forest was tinged with the faintest hue of red—the first presage of decay.
“O, father, is it not magnificent!” exclaimed Anna Temple, as she pointed to the boundless woods rising like an ampitheatre on either hand! “This is like what I have read of the new world, only more sublime if possible. Positively there is more of grandeur in this one scene than in all the courts of royalty in the world. Why, just see—the Eastern kings have never worn mantles more elegantly tinged with scarlet and gold, than these old patriarch trees have put on. It really makes our Quaker garb look sombre, and I expect the very birds will be theeing and thouing us as we pass on through their territory.” And the happy-hearted creature clapped her hands and laughed until the hills sent back an echo.
“Hush, hush, daughter; there is the rumbling of wheels near—nearer than the main road, too, I fear! It may be some party of hunters who have made this a place of rendezvous; it cannot be that foes are thus early on the track, I think.”
At the mention of foes the cheek of Anna was pale as clay, and she nestled close beside her father; but a moment afterward she started to her feet, and the red blood again mantled her brow as she exclaimed: