University of Virginia Library

1. PART I.

There was a rude but pleasant farm-house
situated on the green banks of one of the
pleasant inlets that go meandering from the
Sound far into the verdant bosom of West-chester
County. It was one story high, with
a broad, steep, moss-covered roof, over which
an old oak spreads its wide branches, shielding
it the whole day from the summer sun.
An old `stoope' protected the door, and its
rude columns were thickly clad with the entwiaing
honey-suckle. Each end of the old
black farm-house was also nearly covered,
save where openings had been cut for the
windows, with woodbine and other creeping
plants. There was a neat vegetable garden
at one end of the dwelling and a small orchard
at the other, with the thatched roof of a
long, low barn, seen in the distance. Before
the door was a sort of lawn, on which the
sheep, geese, turkies, and an old domestic
cow, fed all day. This lawn was between the
house and the pleasant creek, where stood a
gate sheltered by a sycamore tree, through
which the cattle were driven to water. All
around was a scene of pleasant vale and wood-land,
with elms and oaks bending low over
the clear deep stream. On the opposite side
were seen several farm-houses with shady
walks along the banks between them, and a
little ways below, on an eminence, was visible
the white columns of a handsome country-seat,
the summer residence of a wealthy New
York merchant, who spent his winters only
in the city, which was twenty miles distant.

The inmates of the old farm-house whose
humble exterior we have described, consisted
of Mr. David Woodhull, a plain farmer, his
wife, and their three daughters, of the respec
tive ages of seventeen, twenty, and twenty-four.
David was a hard working man, and
with great industry just managed, as he said,
`to make both ends meet at the year's end.'
He was very good natured, and being always
too tired when he came in at night to dispute
any points with his good wife, she in ensibly
got to have sole authority in his household.
When David had been married twenty-five
years he found that he was a cypher in his
own family. Mrs. Woodhull managed every
thing as if she were in reality a widow. David
only did the farm's work—a sort of wage-less
slave, whom Mrs. Woodhull allowed lodging
and food for his support. Such undisputed
power lodged in the hands of a wife soon
exercised its peculiar influence over her habits
and temper. From a pretty, pleasant young
country bride, as she was when David first
took her to wife, she gradually, with the possession
of power, became imperative and absolute.
Contradiction from David or from
the three dear pledges of their `mutual love,'
she could not endure with patience. By-and-by
Mrs. Woodhull grew old and plain and
this affected her temper. She was now cross
from morning 'till night, and poor David
found no peace save in the field or barn. At
the time of our story the character of the lady
was established through the whole country as
a shrew of the first water. `Poor David
Woodhull—don't he lead a life of it!' were
the ejaculatory expressions of sympathy he
received when the subject was spoken of by
his sympathizing neighbors.

If David, the rightful lord and master, `led
such a life of it,' what kind of a life led the
three daughters over whom the mother had a
legitimate right to rule! And Mrs. Woodhull
did not shrink from availing herself of
this right. She ruled her children with a rod

of iron. Never were poor girls kept under
such strict severity. They were waked each
morning, winter and summer, with the dawn
by her scolding uproar, and all day long worked
beneath her eye to the music of her tongue.
The eldest daughter, Euphrosia, was twenty-four
and unmarried. It is true nature had not
bestowed on her thin person many of those
charms that attract the other sex. Her hair
was not red but sorrel colored; her face not
dimpled but freckled; her eyes a greyish blue
with pink edges; her neck skinny and her
bust flat and bony; her waist, to be sure, was
very, very small, not one inch larger round
than her neck; her hands would have been
admired doubtless in a collection of anatomical
specimens, and her feet were excellent
matches for her hands. Her nose was turned
up and the corners of her mouth down. She
spoke always to beaux with a simper and a
pucker and a general sympathizing movement
of her whole body. She thought herself
very beautiful—for fat people were her
aversion, it was so vulgar to be fat! Of course
thin people were her delight, and she delighted
in herself particularly. One quality she
had however, respecting which all who knew
Miss Euphrosia had but one opinion. This
was her temper. It was her mother's double-distilled—the
concentrated essence, as the
quack's advertisements have it when they
would forcibly express the strength of their
nostrums. If Mrs. Woodhull was cross, Euphrosia
was crosser. She did not, however,
begin to manifest her peculiar disposition,
(save, us will be seen, to her youngest sister,)
'till she found that she was waning an unwedded
maid.

Sally, the second daughter, was, in her elder
sister's opinion, very homely, inasmuch as
she was very fat. In person she was the very
antipode of Miss Euphrosia. She was a short,
thick, fleshy, good-natured creature, whom her
mother's scolding or her sister's malice could
never put out of temper. She had her fathers
disposition, and like him received a shower
of both their ill will. Though not handsome,
Sally was very good-looking with her
black hair, red round cheeks, and pleasant
smile, which displayed fine white teeth. But
her bare arms were brown and brawny, and
her foot was like that of an ox.

Biddy or Bridget the third daughter, was as
unlike either of her two sisters as a ripe, luscious
peach is like a squash or a red pepper.
She was just seventeen and a perfect rustic
beauty. Her hair was a dark brown, and curled
beautifully all about her brows and adown
her rounded neck. Her eyes were black and
piercing, in the depths of which love unfledged,
lay covert. Her lips were pliant coral,
richly contrasting the beautiful setting of her
pearly teeth which were displayed by the
brightest and most beaming smile in the world
a smile that emanated from a glad pure heart
and bold brow—and bright was the sun of the
soul within to shine forth so radiantly upon
the face. She was just seventeen, and all the
charms of womanhood were ripening in her
person—the eloquent eye, the modest walk,
the subdued smile, with the sweetly full bust,
and rounded waist, and symmetrical foot, all
betrayed that the spring of womanhood was
just deepening into the warm and glowing
summer. There was also a quiet dignity and
a firmness of manner in her, rarely found with
one so young and naturally and wholly ignorant
of the world. She was a girl of good
sense, but of a high spirit. From the time her
personal charms had attracted the notice of
the farmer's lads around and at church and
gathering drew on her eyes of all the rustic
beaux, which was about a year before our
story commenced, she had brought upon herself
the envious ill-will of her eldest sister,
who from that moment became her persevering
tormentor, annoying her in a thousand
ways and making life itself miserable to her.
Biddy had penetration enough to know the
cause, and bore her ill-humor and overbearing
tyranny with extraordinary patience, illustrating
twenty times a day the truth of the beautiful
adage, `a soft answer turneth away
wrath'—that is, in her case, by turning it aside
from affecting her own temper and spirit
She could have born this and also her mother's
unnatural treatment which grew severer
as Biddy grew handsomer, and which at las
reached so far that she forbade her attending
church or even leaving the house for several
weeks previous to the time with which we
have to do. But she had unfortunately chanced
to make an enemy of her sister Sally, who
charged her with having tempted her stout
and honest sweetheart, John Burn, from his
allegiance and making him fall in love with
her instead. It is true that John's heart was
one Sunday set on fire by the blaze of an accidental
glance of Biddy's bright eyes, and
from that day he could think of nothing and

talk of nothing but Biddy, quite forgetting
that such a person as Sally Woodhull was in
existence. He finished his madness by sending
Biddy a boquet composed of scarlet poppies,
water-lilies, mari-gold and pea-blossoms.
Sally discovered this act of treachery to her,
and instead of visiting with her vengeance the
culprit himself, she poured the fury of her
fleshly indignation upon the unoffending
Bridget. This was the first time Sally was
ever known to show temper. But a sage philosopher
very sensibly has asked, `what will
not an aggrieved woman do, especially when
injured in her devout affections?'

Thus Biddy's domestic relations became far
from agreeable. Euphrosia disliked her from
envy, Sally from jealousy, and her mother
because it was her cross nature to do so. It
was, therefore, very unpleasant for her to remain
in doors and be the foot-ball of their several
humors. Every disagreeable duty was
put upon her, and she could perform nothing
that could please either of the three.

`Here, you trollop,' cries the mother, in a
shrill octave, `that cat's got into the cupboard
and spilt the cream. If I catch you to let the
cat get in there again I'll trounce you within
an inch of your life, if you was a grown married
woman, as you never shall be so long
as I have any work for you to do at home.'

`Come, you Biddy,' bawls Miss Euphrosia,
in a cross, spiteful tone, `and wash up this
water I've slopped, if your lady-like hands
an't too fine to touch the floor-cloth. When
you've done it go out and bring in some wood.
Tramp, quick, minx!'

`What are you looking out o' the windur
there for,' cries Sally from the churn, seeing
Biddy pause in carryin a bucket of water to
glance at a boat rowing on the creek; `you
needn't think it's that fool, John Burn, coming
to bring you any more yaller and red flowers.
I gave John a lesson that day, 'ill keep him in
his senses a while I guess Yes, you may
laugh, but I guess John Burn knows who's
substantial pretty and who isn't, if he was beguiled
one time from his true duty. Come
along and take this churn and scour it out
clean.'

Thus passed the wearisome days of slavish
toil to poor Bridget. She sighed and patiently
endured her servitude. But she had a secret
solace in her lot. It chanced, that one
sultry afternoon in July, two months before
the time of our tale, that David was in a hur
ry to get his hay in, before a storm, which was
swiftly rising from the south-west, should
overtake it in the field. He sent to the house
for Sally to come and help him.

`Humph,' said Sally, tossing her head;
`let Miss Bridget go; she'll may-be find
some flowers in the field to send John Burn.'

`Yes, let her go,' chimed in Miss Euphrosia;
`and don't let her wear her sun hat—a little
tanning won't do her delicate complexion any
harm.'

So Biddy was sent to the hay-field and bare-head,
Euphrosia withholding her broad straw
hat. But what more beautiful covering than
her brown tresses could be desired? She,
however, had some care for her complexion,
and when she reached the field she playfully
removed the straw hat from her father's head
to her own, and tying his handkerchief about
his brows, joined him in his labors. How
beautiful she looked in her father's old torn
straw. What a world of beauty, all unconsciously,
it shaded. With what grace she handles
that rake, and how pliant and buoyant
the motions of her body as she turns over the
masses of fragrant hay. Hark! she is singin
a jocund, careless voice—

The sun at length set, seen in a celestial sea
of roseate light, for the shower had rolled
southward, where the columns of rain were at
a distance falling from the cloud to the earth,
and sweeping with vast and majestic motion
over the Sound. Biddy leaned on her rake and
gazed on the setting sun with pleasing interest,
for, to youth and intelligent beauty, like
hers, is ever united pure, though uncultivated,
taste.

`Come, my girl,' said her father, `let us
go homeward;' and taking his rakes and forks
upon his shoulder, he proceeded in the direction
of his house, without looking back to see
if she followed.

She did not follow, nor did she hear him
call to her; for her attention had been a moment
before drawn from the gorgeous clouded
sunset, by the appearance of a boat upon
the creek, which formed a graceful bend at
the foot of the meadow, its dark limpid breast
half hidden by the trees that lined its banks.
She was standing beneath an old apple-tree
that grew within a few paces of a wall and
hedge that separated the meadow from the
creek. The boat contained two young gentlemen,

and from their costume and the appearance
of the fishing tackle in the boat, with
a goodly number of fish, they had been on a
fishing excursion to the old bridge half a mile
above. They had discovered her some minutes
before she saw them, and had purposely
checked their boat to gaze upon her as she
gracefully leaned on her rake with her father's
old straw thrown back from her brow and her
fine eyes full of thought, dwelling upon the
sunset sky.

Biddy lingered a moment to gaze with surprise
and curiosity, as all pretty maidens
would do, on beholding the apparition of two
handsome young men at such a time and place.
The bold glances of one of them who wore an
incipient mustache and was very fashionably
and finically attired, recalled her to a sense of
her impropriety of her delay, and at the same
time to the fact of her father's old hat being
on her head. Half laughing, half blushing at
the appearance, she took off the hat, loosening
in the act a cloud of glorious brown hair,
and turned to make her escape after her father
who had now got quite to the bars at the other
end of the meadow. Before she had taken
half a dozen steps she heard a footstep behind
her, and the sound told her one of the young
men had bounded over the wall. Alarmed,
she nevertheldss did not increase her pace,
and the next moment she felt a hand laid with
slight force upon her wrist. She turned with
some misgiving at her heart, though she felt
no fear, and beheld beside her the young man
with the mustache.

`Sweet creatshure,' he said in that fashionable
chewed tone, so much in vogue with certain
people, `deue not fly me! Boye `Eaven!
what rustic loveliness.'

`Let me go, sir,' cried the young girl, struggling
to disengage herself.

`Go! incomparable rurality! exquisite rusticity!
no, I will not let thee go.'

`But I will go sir,' said Biddy with emphasis.

`Nay, do not struggle, my pretty one, I
must have a kiss first.'

As he spoke he caught her in his arms and
would have ravished a kiss from her bright
indignant lips, if the other, who on seeing him
leap ashore and followed him, had not at the
instant came up.

`What do you mean, Barton?' he cried in
an indignant voice, at the same time releasing
the maiden from his rude embrace.

`Poh, Morris,' he answered with a laugh,
`she's but a pretty tit-bit of a rural—I was
doing her an honor, boye `Eaven, to kiss her.'

`An honor I have no desire of receiving, I
assure you at your lips, sir,' said Biddy with a
smile of contempt, which she instantly changed
to one of gratitude as she turned to the
other and warmly thanked him for his interference.

`I have done but my duty,' he answered,
fixing his fine eyes upon her with undisguised
yet respectfully subdued admiration. `I hope
you will parkon my friend here, who I trust
will not offend again.'

`Offend! demme! you are very green, Morris,'
said the other, as Biddy, after bowing
slightly to Edward Morris and bestowing upon
him a radiant smile and a glance that made
his blood leap, tripped away with her old straw
hat in one hand and her rake balanced over
her shoulder; `she's but a farmer's daughter
and unprotected.' And the sensual yet foppish
Fitz Henry Barton stuck his glass in his
eye and looked after her as she lightly crossed
the meadow. Nor could Morris refrain from
following her retreat with an admiring eye,
as he contemplated her pretty round figure
and graceful movements, into which she had
insensibly, from the innate consciousness of
being observed, thrown a spice of rustic coquetry.
Coquetry of manner is instinctive in
woman—even in the most natural and unsophisticated.

`True, she is unprotected,' said Morris, as
Biddy disappeared amid the trees of her father's
orchard, `but helplessness is in itself a
sacred shield to protect innocence. I am pained,
Barton, at your licentious notions with regard
to woman.'

`It is not woman in general that I think
lightly of,' said Barton arranging his cravat
with an affected air, `but of girls of her class
—pretty girls I mean. Do you suppose I
would have gone up to a respectable young
lady in this way, eh?'

`I don't know what you mean by respectable,'
said Morris, with some severity.

`Why, respectable is—demme! is respectable,
eh?'

`Why, I will not affect to be ignorant of
what your notions of respectable are! They
are on a par with those who move in what is
called `fashionable life.' But `respectable'
is, in my idea, based on integrity, honesty,
and virtue. This farmer, whoever he is that

is the father of this young girl, is, if he possesses
these qualities, as respectable as John
Jacob A—'

`Pah, Morris!' said Barton, fingering his
mustache, `you're getting develish low of
late in your ideas! Do you mean to say that
I did as wrong in offering to kiss this pretty
wench as if she had been—had been—had
been for instance Miss — of Broadway?'

`Yes, higher wrong—because in this instance
the party was wholly unknown to you.'

`But, still, you don't say I insulted her?'

`I do.'

`She certainly can't feel so sensitively on
such a point, as a respectable girl would do!
Being brought up in the country she cannot
have that delicacy which is so easily wounded
in cultivated females.

`If anything their naturalness of character
and retired mode of life render them more so
than our city females. By heaven! Barton
I could have struck you—she was so very
modest and pretty.'

`Ha, ha! devilish good! Edward Morris,
the high descended and rich, doing battle for
a hay-making wench! 'Pon honor, Ned, I
must cut your acquaintance! ha, ha, hah!'

Morris looked slightly displeased, and they
crossed the hedge and entered their boat in
silence. They floated with the current some
distance, when Barton said, in a light manner—

`By-the-by, Morris, I think I shall follow
up this adventure! It is'nt every day a pretty
thing like this jumps into a man's arms!'

`I do believe, Barton,' said Morris, with
quickness, `that you feel yourself at liberty
to attempt the seduction of every unprotected
girl.'

`No, not if she is respectable! Oh! no! It
is the pretty poor girls—the—farmer's daughters—the
milliners—the poor widow's daughters—the—the—'

`The poor, friendless and unprotected, in
fine,' continued Morris, with a look of virtuous
indignation; `those whom Providence,
by denying them natural protectors, has tacitly
and eloquently thrown upon the protection
of the strong and able. If you were not my
relative, Barton, I should despise you.'

`Parbleu, Ned! you are too philanthropic!
You have too high notions of the virtue of
this class of girls. There is'nt one of them
but would be glad to bestow their chary favors
upon an elegant young fellow who has
money and can buy them playthings. If we
don't gather such rips peaches as that rosy
one we but now saw growing in yonder
meadow, some country poor will for us!'

`Tell me truly, Fitz Henry Barton,' cried
Morris, rising in the boat and looking him
full in the face; `do you really believe that
every young woman in humble life less regards
her virtue, that priceless gem of all female
honor, than those young ladies with
whom we daily associate in town on terms of
equality? Answer me, truly.

`Whoy,' answered Barton, coolly, trailing
his hand over the side of the boat in the water,
`I am surprised you can think otherwise.'

`I do think otherwise and I know otherwise!
Such girls feel an insult as deeply as
—yes, as your own sister would, Barton!
They think as much of their personal honor,
too, as the females of our own condition! You
are in a great error when you assert the opposite
to be the truth.'

`What fills our theatre galleries, and our
streets at night with courtezans, my dear boy?
They are mostly of this class,' said Barton,
scornfully.

`Not innate love of vice in them—but
treachery, false treachery in man! In nine
cases out of ten the poor creatures are victims
of broken vows—youthful wives, degraded
through intemperate and worthless husbands,
or worse still, poor and unprotected maidens
tempted and tempted by the glitter of the gold
and the fascinations and art of libertines!
Nor are they all of this class—many of them
have fallen from the sphere in which the highest
and best now move! It is, alas! too common
an opinion you entertain, and one that
needs correcting.'

`Fudge, Ned! all this indignant sentiment
because I offered to kiss a pretty country lass,'
said Barton, affecting to wear an air of indifference
which he was far from feeling beneath
his friend's severe language; `for all
this I shall follow up my rustic amour.'

`If you do, Barton, and wrong come of it to
the young creature, I shall shake you off
from my heart and hand as I would a serpent.'

`Oh, you are too warm, Morris! Well, I
will let her drop! But she is too fair to lose.
Did you see what an inviting waist! what
tournure and ease! Heigho? well, let her go;
Here we are at the foot of your father's garden.
Let us land.'

The two young men possessing such opposite
characters, landed at the stairs of a
summer-house that projected over the water,
and taking their lines and fish, proceeded in
silence, by a winding gravelled avenue, towards
the country house before mentioned as
visible from David Woodhull's.

Fitz Henry Barton was descended from an
old Dutch family on his mother's side, and
therefore belonged to the true aristocracy of
New York; for, in the eyes of this class, Hendrick
Hudson and William, the Conqueror,
had the same relative rank. He was an exquisite
in mind and manners. Nature had
given him common sense, but art had perverted
it. He was a gentleman by education and
position and circumstances, in every thing
except principles. In this he was sadly wanting.
He was sensual, and therefore when he
found it was a fashionable vice, very easily
became a roue. His libertinism, however,
had its limits. He was one of that species of
hawk that will pounce only where its game
flies low and is crippled. He never saw a
pretty girl of what Mrs. Trollope aptly called
`the second quality class,' without licentious
emotions and regarding her as `fair game;'
while in the presence of the young and lovely
of his own condition, he never harbored
thoughts unworthy them or his own relative
social position—which is to say, that Fitz
Henry Barton was a gentleman among his
own condition, and a low, unprincipled debauche
out of this sphere.

Edward Morris, on the other hand, was a
high-minded honorable man. He loved honor
for itself and virtue for its own reward. He
was a physician by profession, though his inherited
wealth precluded the necessity of his
pursuing it. He loved reading and the arts,
and mingled freely in society, which he adorned
and in which he was beloved. His elder
and only sister had married the elder brother
of Barton, and hence the intimacy of the two
thus related—an intimacy of circumstances
rather than of sympathy of minds. They
were now in the country at the seat of Morris'
father, it being the first time for five years
he had passed any time there, college and European
travel having kept him that period
from his native city. He now made his
father's house, both in town and country, his
home. Barton lived in town in his own private
rooms, which he had fitted up and furnished
in the most sumptuous manner.

Such was the character and condition of
these two sportsmen whom Biddy so unexpectedly
encountered. As she tripped lightly
homeward, she could not help thinking to
himself how rude and unpleasant one of them
was and how handsome and generous the
other. Fitz Henry, exquisite as he was,
plainly suffered much by the comparison
which she was busily instituting in her little
head. At length the scales preponderated so
decidedly in favor of her preserver, that she
gave her thoughts from that moment wholly
to him, quite forgetting the other.

`How indignant he was!' thought she,
`how his black eyes lighted up! How handsome
his face is, and how gentle his voice
was when he spoke to me. I am sure I shall
never forget him in this world!'

She said this as she reached the gate to the
house, from which she now heard her name
pronounced in every key in anger's gamut.
She hastened forward, but caring less for her
cross mother and sisters than she ever did
before. She had something now in her heart
pleasant to dwell upon. So she went in and
received the usual three-fold scolding for her
delay, after her father had got in, with great
patience and went cheerfully about the tasks
imposed upon her singing—

The next day she was sent into the field by
Euphrosia, who spitefully determined that she
should be exposed to the sun, `Till,' as she
said to Sally, `the pert minx who thinks herself
so much better looking than other folks,
is tanned black.'

It was about noon of the next day that she
was raking her swathe of hay, shaded beneath
her good-natured father's old straw hat, and
when she had got in her rake a heavy mass
which she had made three several efforts to
throw upon the hay-cock, that a hand was laid
upon the rake, and a kind voice said to her—

`I fear this is too heavy for you to lift, miss
—allow me to assist you.'

The voice thrilled her heart with strange
emotions—but they were those of undefined
and subdued joy. It was the voice that she
had heard in her dreams all the last night?
She looked timidly up and saw also the face
that had mingled in those dreams. She smiled,
and tremblingly resigned the rake. Morris
looked his thanks and soon completed her
task.

`This is very warm work in the noon-day
sun, for a young girl,' he said drying the perspiration
on his forehead with his cambric
kerchief.

`No, sir, not quite so warm as in the house,'
she said, archly; but, he being ignorant of
how her domestic affairs stood in the family,
this was lost upon him at the time, though
remembered afterwards.

David Woodhull lay beneath an apple-tree
sleeping away the noon, in its cool shade.
Morris cast a glance towards him, and then
taking Biddy's hand playfully, yet respectfully,
led her to the same tree and sat beside
her upon a grass grown root. Why submitted
she to be led so passively? The power
was not in the slight touch of his hand, but
in his eye, his smile, the sweet inviting expression
of his whole face. Love had her in
leading-strings, all invisibly to her.

An hour elasped, and David Woodhull
awoke, and so did Edward and Biddy from
their happy waking dream! An hour had
passed and Biddy was taught that she had a
heart, and Morris also, found that he had lost
his! An hour had passed! and in one hour a
young couple can say a great deal and make
wonderful progress towards friendship. It is
useless to say all Morris said or all Biddy replied,
with downcast eyes and tell-tale cheek.
Suffice it that Edward Morris had been struck
with the pretty hay-maker at first sight, and
not having ceased thinking or dreaming of her,
had resolved to pay a visit to the meadow to
see her once more—just to get acquainted
with her, and if she were worthy, devise some
means to protect her from Barton's annoying
libertinism. One hour in her society proved
to him her worthiness; and when David
awoke he had an impassioned declaration of
his passion trembling on his lips. He hastily
instead, pressed them to her hand and hastened
away before her father was aware of his
presence.

`How fortunate that I did not commit myself,
he said on cool reflection, as he regained
the boat; `if I had done so I could never
have unbound my honor from my passed
word! What would my friends have said?
Well, 'tis passed now! She is very lovely—so
ingenuous, so unsophisticated! So sweet in
manner yet withal charmingly brusque. I
am certainly in love with her and I am glad
it has gone no farther—that I have not interested
her in me so that she will not speedily
forget me! Yes, I will see her no more! Honor,
principle, duty forbid it, for I can never
marry her. Oh, this confounded opinion of
caste, that will not let a man marry where his
heart would! If, now, she were in my condition
of life, I should not hesitate to cast myself
at her feet and declare my passion and
offer her my heart. Because she is a poor
farmer's daughter I can, (if I am only a fashionable
man,) but honorably seduce her, if I
pursue her acquaintance. Out upon the hollow
falsities of life! I must cease to think of
her! Honor forbids all else! Yet I will watch
over her lest this libertine, Barton, should
meditate her ruin. The maiden, however
low she be, who has interested the feelings of
Edward Morris, shall be entitled to his honorable
protection! If then she should be so
honored, why not carry it further and honor
her as my wife with an undisputed right to
protect her? Nay, I can think of the subject
no longer.'

In half an hour afterwards during every
moment of which he was thinking of this subject,
he arrived at his landing-place at the
foot of the lawn at his father's seat. Whether
Edward Morris would have sought to see
Biddy again or not, cannot be said, as he was
the next morning unexpectedly called to accompany
an aunt to Charleston, where he
was absent, even at the time our story opens.
In a subsequent part, we shall carry out
more fully the fortunes of our characters,
than the limits of a single chapter of this
`work' will enable us to do, and show
the effect of Morris' hay-making visit upon
Biddy's heart and life. The remembrance of
it was, as we have said, the only solace that
enabled her to endure the tyranny of her
mother and sisters, without a murmur.