“But I will give you one security, dear Richard, before we part, if you will suffer me. You would have married me more than a year ago; but as I knew my father’s situation, his preferences, and his dangers, I refused to do so until the war was over. It has not helped him that I refused you then. I don’t see that it will hurt him if I marry you now; and there is something in the life we have spent together the last few days, that tells me we ought to be married, Richard.”
This was spoken with the sweetest possible blush upon her cheeks.
“Do you consent, then, dear Frederica?” demanded the enraptured lover.
She put her hand into his own; he carried it to his lips, then drew her down to him where he lay upon his leafy couch, and repeated the same liberty with hers. His shout, in another moment, summoned Elijah Field to his side. The business in prospect was soon explained. Our good parson readily concurred in the propriety of the proceeding. The inhabitants of the little camp of refuge were soon brought together, Brough placing himself directly behind his young mistress. The white teeth of the old African grinned his approbation; the favoring skies looked down upon it, soft in the dreamy twilight of the evening sunset; and there, in the natural temple of the forest—none surely ever prouder or more appropriate—with columns of gigantic pine and cypress, and a gothic luxuriance of vine, and leaf, and flower, wrapping shaft, and cornice, capital and shrine, our two lovers were united before God—our excellent preacher never having a more solemn or grateful sense of the ceremony, and never having been more sweetly impressive in his manner of performing it. It did not impair the validity of the marriage that Brough honored it, as he would probably have done his own, by dancing Juba, for a full hour after it was over, to his own satisfaction at least, and in the absence of all other witnesses. Perhaps, of all his little world, there were none whom the old negro loved quite so much, white or black, as his young mistress and her youthful husband. With the midnight, Frederica left the camp of refuge under the conduct of Elijah Fields. They departed in the boat, the preacher pulling up stream—no easy work against a current of four knots—with a vigorous arm, which, after a tedious space, brought him to the landing opposite old Sabb’s farm. Here Frederica landed, and the dawn of day found her standing in front of the old log-house which had been assigned her parents, and a captive in the strict custody of the tory sentries.
[Conclusion in our next.
RED JACKET.
Written on being presented by a lady with a wild flower that grew on his grave, near Buffalo.
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BY W. H. C. HOSMER.