University of Virginia Library

18. CHAPTER XVIII.
A CONFERENCE IN THE TOME.

These words at once awoke the soldier to activity.
Clarence Conway was not the man to become subdued
by “amaryllis in the shade,” nor meshed, fly-like, in
the “tangles of any Næra's hair.” A new mood possessed
him with the communication of his faithful scout,
who, by the way, also performed the duties of his lieutenant.

“Get your men instantly to horse, Jack Bannister,
and send them forward on the back track to the river;”
was the prompt command of the superior.

“Done a'ready, colonel,” was the respectful answer.

“Good;—and, now, for your report.”

The examination which followed was brief, rapid,
and comprehensive. Though fond of long speeches
usually, Jack Bannister was yet the model of a man of
business. He could confine himself, when needful, to
the very letter.

“From whence came the enemy?—above or below?”

“Below, sir.”

“What force do your scouts report to you?”

“Large!—I reckon it's Rawdon's whole strength;
but the advance only is at hand.”

“Rawdon, ha! He goes then to the relief of `Ninety-Six.'
I trust he goes too late. But our business is
scarce with him. What cavalry has he? Did you
learn that?”

“It's mighty small, I'm thinking; but we can't hear
for sartin. It's had a monstrous bad cutting up, you

know, at Orangeburg, and don't count more, I reckon,
than sixty men, all told. That's the whole force of
Coffin, I know.”

“We must manage that, then! It's the only mode
in which we can annoy Rawdon and baffle his objects.
Between `Briar Park' and `Ninety-Six' we should
surely pick up all of his flock,—and must! Are the
scouts in? All?”

“All but Finley—I'm dub'ous he's cut off below.
They've caught him napping, I reckon.”

“If so, he has paid, before this, the penalty of his
nap. We must be careful not to incur like penalties.
We have nothing to do but to draw off quietly from
Briar Park, taking the back track by the river, and
plant ourselves in waiting a few miles above. There
are a dozen places along the road where we can bring
them into a neat ambush, which will enable us to empty
their saddles. What do the lower scouts say of their
order of march?”

“Precious little! They had to run for it—Coffin's
cavalry scouring pretty considerably ahead. But they
keep up a mighty quick step. It's a forced march, and
the cavalry is half a mile or more in advance.”

“They march without beat of drum?”

“Or blast of bugle;—so quiet you can hardly hear
the clatter of a sabre. Nothing but the heavy tread of
their feet.”

“Enough. As you have sent the troop forward, let
your scouts file off quietly after them. Keep close
along the river, and let them all be in saddle when I
reach them at the end of the Causey. Rawdon will
probably make the `Barony' his place of rest to-night.
He must have marched fifty miles since last midnight.
Pity we had not known of this! That fellow, Finley—
he was a sharp fellow, too,—but no matter! Go you
now, Bannister. Have my horse in readiness by the
old vault; and let your scouts, in filing off, dismount
and lead their horses, that there may be no unnecessary
clatter of hoofs. Away, now—I will but say farewell
to Mrs. Middleton and Flora.”

“Tell 'em good-by for me, too, colonel, if you please;
for they've always been mighty genteel in the way they've
behaved to me, and I like to be civil.”

Clarence promised him, and the excellent fellow disappeared,
glad to serve the person whom he most affectionately
loved. Clarence then proceeded to the apartment
in which the ladies were sitting; and suffering
under the natural excitement produced by intelligence,
always so startling in those days, as the approach of a
British army. Brief words at parting were allowed to
the lovers; and whether Mrs. Middleton conjectured, or
had been told by Flora of what had taken place between
them, the old lady was civil enough to leave the couple
together without the restraint of her maternal presence.
Preliminaries, at such moments, among sensible people
are usually dispeused with.

“You will not answer me, Flora?”

“Spare me, Clarence—not now.”

“Now, now!—think, dearest Flora, of the circumstances
under which I leave you;—the force that drives
me from your presence! Remember the danger that
follows my footsteps, and the dangers which I am bound
to seek. I may never again behold you—may lose, in
the skirmish of the dawn—the hope, the fear, the thousand
dreams and anxieties which now possess and alternately
afflict and delight my heart. Let me not go forth
trembling with this doubt. But one word—one only—
which shall fill my bosom with new spirit, strength and
courage.—Speak, dearest Flora—but a single word!”

“Ah, Clarence, urge me not! What I should say,
might have a very different effect upon you;—might
subdue your spirit, disarm your strength;—make your
heart to waver in its courage;—might—”

“Enough! enough!—I ask for no other answer!” he
exclaimed with bright eyes and a bounding spirit.—
“Nothing could do that, but the fear of losing a treasure
suddenly won and so precious, over all things, in my
sight. But I trust that this sweet conviction, dear Flora,
will have no such effect upon my spirit. If, before, I
fought only for my country—I now fight for love and

country!—and the double cause should occasion double
courage. Farewell—farewell!—God be with you, and
his angels watch over you, as fondly, as faithfully, and
with more ability to serve you, than your own Clarence.
—Farewell, farewell!”

Hastily seizing her hand, he carried it to his lips with
a fervent pressure; then, elastic with new emotions of
delight, that made him heedless and thoughtless of the
danger, he hurried downwards into the court-yard below.
The area lay in utter silence. The scouts had gone, the
sentinels withdrawn; and, with a single glance up to the
apartment where he had left the lady of his love, the
youthful partisan took his way after his lieutenant. Let
us only follow him so far as to look after other agents in
our narrative, who lie upon his route, and whom we may
no longer leave unnoticed.

Long and wearisome, indeed, had been the hour of
anxious watch which the Chief of the Black Riders had
maintained over the barony, in his gloomy hiding place.
Twenty times, in that period, had he emerged from the
tomb, and advanced towards the dwelling of the living.
But his course was bounded by the military restraints
which the timely prudence of Conway, and the watchfulness
of Bannister, had set around the mansion. Vainly,
from the cover of this or that friendly tree, did his eyes
strain to pierce the misty intervals, and penetrate the
apartment, whose gay lights and occasional shadows
were all that were distinguishable. Disappointed each
time, he returned to his place of concealment, with increasing
chagrin; plunging, in sheer desperation, down
into its awful and dark recesses, which to him presented
no aspects either of awe or darkness. At length, however,
the sound of a movement near the mansion awakened
in him a hope that his tedious watch would
shortly end. Slight though the noises were, under the
cautious management of Bannister—the calling in of the
sentries, and their withdrawal, necessarily reached his
ears, and prepared him for the movement of the troop
which followed. Each trooper leading his steed with
shortened rein, they deployed slowly beside the tomb,

and he was compelled, during their progress, to observe
the most singular quiet.

The vaulted habitations of the dead were no unfrequent
hiding-places in those days for the living, and to
troopers, trained in the swamp warfare, to convert every
situation of obscurity and darkness into a place of retreat
or ambush, the slightest circumstance or movement on his
part, he well knew, would result in their sudden search
of his gloomy house of refuge. Through a chink in the
decaying door of the vault, he watched their progress;
and when they had gone from sight, swallowed up in
the deep blank of the forest along the margin of the
river, he once more ascended to the light. His path
now promised to be free. He knew the troop to be
one of his brother's regiment—a small though famous
squadron—“The Congaree Blues”—proverbial for bold
riding, happy horsemanship, and all of that characteristic
daring which every where marked the southern
cavalry throughout the war. The uniform he readily
distinguished, though not the persons. He fancied that
his brother was among them; and hearing no farther
sound, with that impatience which was natural to his
desires, and which was necessarily increased by the
restraints to which they had been subjected, he prepared
to go boldly forward to the mansion. But the
coast was not yet clear. He had advanced a few
paces only, when he heard the faint, but mellow tones
of a distant bugle, rising and falling in sweet harmony
with the light zephyrs which bore them to his ears.
These sounds now furnished him with the true reason
for his brother's flight. The enemies of his kinsman,
according to his profession, were not unlikely to be his
friends; yet the business upon which the heart of Edward
Morton was set, and the position in which he
then stood, were such as to make the presence of a
British force almost as little desirable to him as had
been that of his brother. His present objects admitted
of no friendships. Thoroughly selfish, they could only
be prosecuted at the expense of the cause in which he
was engaged, and at the sacrifice of that band with

which, for life and death, his own life—if his oath to
them were of any value—was solemnly and indissolubly
connected. Bitterly, therefore, and with renewed
vexation, did he listen to the sweet but startling tones
of that sudden trumpet. Cursing the course of events
which, so far, that night, seemed destined to baffle his
purposes, he stood for a few moments, in doubt, upon
the spot where the sounds first struck his ears; hesitating
whether to go forward boldly, or at once return
to his place of safety. To adopt the former course,
was, in his present undisguised condition, to declare to
Flora Middleton the fact, which he had hitherto studiously
concealed from her knowledge, of his connexion
with the British cause. Such a revelation, he well
knew, would, in the mind of one so religiously devoted
to the whig party as was that maiden, operate most
unfavourably against his personal pretensions, on the
success of which, he still flattered himself, he might, in
some degree, rely. While he doubted and deliberated
on his course, he was startled by other sounds, which
warned him of the necessity of a prompt determination.
The heavy footsteps of a man, whose tread was measured
like that of a soldier, were heard approaching
through the grove that extended from the dwelling in
the direction of the tomb; and the outlaw moved hurriedly
back to the shelter he had left. He was scarcely
rapid enough in his movements. The person approaching
was no other than Clarence Conway. He had just
parted, as we have seen, with Flora Middleton. Her
last words were still sounding in his ears like some
sweet, melancholy music which the language of one
heart delivers, in love, for the consolation of another.
The last pressure of her hand seemed still to make
itself felt from his own, upward, to his heart, with a
sensation which carried a thrill of joy to its deepest recesses.
With the bugle of the enemy sounding on the
track behind him, he had then no thought, no feeling
for the enemy—and, certainly, no fear. Foes, at that
moment, if not forgotten, awakened no emotion in his
bosom which a smile of indifference upon his lips did
not sufficiently express. From musings, the dreamy
languor of which may be readily imagined, he was
awakened by the sudden glimpse he had caught of his
kinsman's person. The mere human outline was all
that he beheld, and this for an instant only. At first,
he was disposed to fancy that it was one of his own
dragoons, all of whom had gone forward in that direction,
and one of whom might have been left in the
hurry of his comrades, or possibly detached on some
special service. But the retreat of the outlaw had been
too precipitate—too like a flight—not to awaken instantly
the suspicions of the partisan. To challenge
the fugitive by the usual summons was probably to
alarm his own enemies, and was a measure not to be
thought of. To hurry in pursuit was the only mode of
ascertaining his object, and this mode was put in execution
as promptly as resolved upon. The partisan
rushed forward, but the object of his pursuit was no
longer to be seen. The old field, on one hand, was
bare and desolate—the park, on the left, did not attract
the youth's attention. Obviously, the melancholy grove
which led to and environed the ancient vault, was that
to which the footsteps of the fugitive would most naturally
incline. To this he pursued, until he stood beside
the tomb. Then, and not till then, did he speak, challenging
the fugitive to “stand” whom he could no
longer see. The summons was heard the moment
after the outlaw had buried himself in his place of concealment.
The tones of his brother's voice arrested
the outlaw—that voice awakened all his rage and hate,
while reminding him of his gage of battle; and when he
remembered that Clarence Conway had but that instant
left the presence of the woman whom he sought, and
whom he had not been permitted to see—when he remembered
that he was his hated rival, and when he thought
that his lips might even then be warm with the fresh
kisses of hers—the feelings in his heart were no longer
governable! Uniting with that gnawing impatience,
which had grown almost to a fever, and was a frenzy,
under his late constraint, they determined him against
all hazards; and, darting from the vault, he answered
the summons of his foe with a hiss of scorn and defiance.

“Stand thou!—Clarence Conway—wretch and rebel!
—We are met on equal terms at last.”

“Ay,” cried the other, no ways startled at the sudden
apparition; “well met!” and as the outlaw sprang forward
from the tomb with uplifted dagger, Clarence met
him with his own. A moment's collision only had ensued,
when the latter struck his weapon into the mouth
of his enemy, with a blow so forceful as to precipitate
him back into the cavern which he had just left. Clarence
sprang into the tomb after him, and there, in the
deep darkness of the scene, among the mouldering coffins
and dry bones of the dead, they grappled in deadly
desperation. Death, and the presence of its awful
trophies, had no terrors for either. The living passions
of the heart were triumphant over their threatening
shadows, and the struggle was renewed between
the two with a degree of hate and fury that found
increase rather than diminution from the solemn and
dark associations by which they were encompassed.
But few words were spoken, and those only in the
breathing intervals which their struggles left them.
The language of the outlaw was that of vituperation
and hate; that of Conway, an indignation natural to
feelings which revolted at the brutal and sanguinary
rage of his enemy, tempered, at the same time, with
equal scorn, and resolution. In Clarence Conway, the
chief of the Black Riders saw only the embodied form
of all the evil influences which he had felt or fancied
from his boyhood; the long engendered envy and
malice of twenty years finding, at length, its unqualified
expression. In his eyes, he was the hateful rival
who had beguiled from him with equal facility, the
regards of parents, the attachments of friends, the
smiles of fortune and the love of woman. Clarence,
on the other hand, no longer saw the kinsman of his
youth—the son of the same father—in the person of
the outlaw; or, if he remembered the ties of blood at

all, it was only to warm his hostility the more against
one who had so commonly outraged, and so cruelly
dishonoured them! It was as the betrayer of his country,
and the associate of the most savage outlaws that ever
arrayed themselves against her peace and liberty, that
he struck, and struck with fatal design to destroy and
extirpate! Nor need it be denied that these motives
were stimulated by the conviction that he himself fought
for life, with a personal foe who had threatened him
with all the haunting dangers of an enduring and
bloody enmity—a hatred born without cause, and
nourished without restraint—warmed by bad passions,
mean rivalry, and a suspicious selfishness which no
labour of love could render reasonable, and which could
only finally cease in the death of one or both of the
combatants. The incoherent language, the broken
words, and fiendish threatenings of the outlaw, left nothing
on this subject to conjecture; and while the two
writhed together in their narrow apartment, the otherwise
horrible stillness of their strife might be thought
relieved and rendered human by the bursts of passion
and invective which fell the while from the lips of both.
But these caused no interruption to the conflict. They
fought only with daggers, though both were provided
with sword and pistol. A mutual sense of the proximity
of those whom neither wished to alarm, rendered them
careful not to employ weapons which could draw a
third party to the scene of strife. Besides, the dagger
was the only weapon that might be employed in their
limited area with any propriety. This weapon, deadly
in the close struggle as it usually is, was rendered less
effectual in the imperfect light of the place, and by the
baffling readiness of their rival skill. They both felt
that the struggle must be fatal, and did not, accordingly,
suffer their rage to disarm their providence and caution.
Still, several wounds had been given and received on
either side. One of these had penetrated the right arm
of the partisan, but the point of the dagger had been
diverted, and the wound was one of the flesh only, not
deep nor disabling. The outlaw had been less fortunate.
That first blow, which he had received in the
mouth at the entrance of the vault, had necessarily
influenced the combat as first blows usually do; and
though not of serious hurt, for the point of the weapon
found resistance against his clenched teeth, two of
which were broken, still it seriously affected the feelings
of the parties. The one it encouraged, the other
it provoked to increased anger, which impaired his
coolness. A second and third wound in each of his
arms had followed in the vault, and a moment came in
which a fourth promised to be final. Clarence had
grappled closely with his kinsman, had borne him backward,
and succeeded in prostrating him, face upward,
upon the pile of coffins which rose in the centre
of the tomb. Here, with his knee upon the breast of
his enemy, one hand upon his throat, and the other
bearing on high the already dripping steel, the stroke
and the death seemed equally inevitable. So, indeed,
the outlaw considered it; and the language of his lips
at that moment of his greatest peril, spoke more decisively
for his manhood than, perhaps, it had ever done
before.

“Strike!” he cried; “I fear you not! The devil
you have served has served you faithfully in turn! I
ask you not for mercy—I loathe you, Clarence Conway—I
loathe and curse you to the last. Strike then,
as I should have stricken you had the chance fallen to
my lot.”

The weakness of a human and a social sentiment
made the youth hesitate. He shivered as he thought
upon the ties of blood—ties which he could never
entirely forget, however much they might be scorned
by his profligate brother. He was still his
father's son—he would have spared—he wished to
spare him. While he hesitated, a new and desperate
effort was made by the prostrate outlaw. Hope and
fear united for a last and terrible struggle. He half
rose—he grasped the arm with which Clarence held
him, with demoniac strength, and flinging himself upward,
with the exercise of all that muscle which he

possessed in almost equal degree with his brother, he
almost shook himself free from the hold which the latter
had taken upon him. It was then that the dagger
of Clarence descended!—then, when it became obvious
that no indulgence could be given to his foe without
danger to himself; but the blow, even then, was not final
—not fatal! It touched no vital region. The desperate
effort of the outlaw, though it failed in its object, effected
another, which operated to his partial safety. The mouldering
coffins upon which he was stretched, yielded beneath
his gigantic struggles, sank under the violence and
pressure, and ere the blow reached the heart of the
threatened victim, came down, with a fearful crash, in
fragments upon the damp floor of the vault. The dagger-point
barely grazed the breast of the falling man;
and Clarence, still grappling with his foe, and grappled
by him in turn, was dragged downward to the earth,
and the two lay together, for an instant, without strife,
among the crushed and bleached bones of a bygone
generation. Both were breathless, but there was no
mitigation of their fury. With some difficulty they
scrambled to their feet, separate, but only to renew
their terrible embrace.

“Let there be an end to this!” said Morton, hoarsely.
“Let us go forth into the moonlight—we can do nothing
here, it seems.”

“Ay—any where!” was the reply of the other;
“but let it be quickly. I have not a moment to spare.”

“A moment should suffice for either; and would
have done had there been sufficient light for the business.
So far, Clarence Conway, you have had the
matter all to yourself. But there is a day for every
dog, they tell us; and though still there be no daylight,
I trust that my day is at hand. Lead the way; I am
ready. Let the dagger still be the weapon. It is a
sure one, and not much clatter. Besides, it brings us
so much the nigher to each other, which is brotherly,
you know.”

The sterner, perhaps the nobler, features of the outlaw
stood out in bolder relief at the moment which he

himself believed was one of his greatest danger. Morton
was not deficient in animal courage. It was only
less often apparent, because, like the Italian, he preferred
the practice of a subtler agent. A fierce laugh
concluded his attempt at playfulness. To this the heart
of Clarence gave back no response. Though not less
fearless than his brother—nay, though greatly excited
by the strife, it yet had, to his mind, the aspect of a
horror which he could not complacently behold. The
few moments consumed in this brief dialogue, had
brought him back to those reflections which the provocation
of the strife had almost wholly banished. But
he suffered no mental nor moral scruples, at such a
moment, to impair his manhood.

“I too am ready,” was his only answer as he left the
vault. He was followed by the outlaw; and there, in
another moment, they stood together on the green
sward before the tomb, fiercely confronting each other
with eyes of mortal hate—utterly unmoved by the pure
and placid smiles of that maiden moon whose blessed
light they were about to employ for the most unblessed
purpose.