University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.

Let us now return to our young traveller, whose
escape we have already narrated. Utterly unconscious
of the melancholy circumstance which had
diverted his enemies from the pursuit of himself, he
had followed studiously the parting directions of
the young maiden, to whose noble feeling and fearless
courage he was indebted for his present safety;
and taken the almost blind path which she had
hastily described to him. On this route he had for
some time proceeded, with a motion not extravagantly
free, but sufficiently so, having the start, and
with the several delays to which his pursuers had
been subjected, to have escaped the danger—while
the vigour of his steed lasted—even had they fallen
on the proper route. He had proceeded in this
way for several miles, when at length he came
upon a place whence several roads diverged into
opposite sections of the country. Ignorant of the
localities, he reined in his horse, and deliberated
with himself for a few moments as to the path he
should pursue. While thus engaged, a broad

bright glare of flame suddenly illumined the woods
on his left hand, followed with the shrieks, equally
sudden, seemingly of a woman. There was no
hesitation in the action of the youth. With unscrupulous
and fearless precipitation, he gave his horse
the necessary direction, and with a smart application
of the rowel, plunged down the narrow path
towards the spot from whence the alarm had
arisen. As he approached, the light grew more intense,
and he at length discovered a little cottage-like
dwelling, completely embowered in thick foliage,
through the crevices of which the flame proceeded,
revealing the cause of terror, and illuminating
for some distance the dense woods around.
The shrieks still continued; and throwing himself
from his horse, Ralph darted forward, and with a
single and sudden application of his foot, struck the
door from its hinges, and entered the dwelling just
in time to save its inmates from the worst of all
manner of death. The apartment was in a light
blaze—the drapery of a couch which stood in one
corner partially consumed, and, at the first glance,
the whole prospect indicating but little hope of a
successful struggle with the conflagration. There
was no time to be lost, yet the scene was enough to
have paralyzed the nerves of the most heroic action.
On the couch thus circumstanced lay an ancient
lady, seemingly in the very last stages of disease,
and progressing rapidly to dissolution. She seemed
only at intervals conscious of the fire. At her
side, in a situation almost as helpless as her own,
was the young female whose screams had first
awakened the attention of the traveller. She lay
moaning beside the couch, shrieking at intervals,
and though in momentary danger from the flames,
which continued to increase, taking no steps for
their arrest or avoidance. Ralph went manfully
to work, and had the satisfaction of finding partial
success attend his efforts. With a fearless hand he
grasped and tore down the inflammable and burning
drapery which curtained the windows and the
couch; and which, made of light cotton stuffs, presented
a ready auxiliar to the progress of the destructive
element. Striking down the burning
shutter with a single and strong blow, he admitted
the fresh air, without which suffocation must soon
have followed, and throwing from the apartment
such of the furniture as had been seized upon by
the flames, he found little difficulty in arresting
their farther advance. All this was the work of a
few moments. There had been no word of intercourse
between the parties, and the youth now surveyed
them with looks of curious inquiry, for the
first time. The invalid, as we have said, was evidently
struggling with the last stages of natural decay.
Her companion was evidently youthful, in
spite of those marks which even the unstudied eye
might have discerned in her features, of a temper
and a spirit subdued and put to rest by the world's
strife and trial, and by afflictions which are not
often found to crowd and to make up the history
and being of the young. Their position was peculiarly
insulated, and Ralph wondered much at the
singularity of a scene to which his own experience
could furnish no parallel. Here were two lone
women—living on the borders of a savage nation,
and forming the frontier of a class of whites little
less savage, without any protection, and, to his
mind, without any motive for making such their
abiding place. His wonder might possibly have
taken the shape of inquiry, but that there was
something of oppressive reserve and shrinking
timidity in the air of the young woman, who alone
could have replied to his inquiries. At this time
an old female negro entered, now for the first time
alarmed by the outcry, who assisted in removing
such traces of the fire as still lingered about the
room. She seemed to occupy a neighbouring outhouse,
to which, having done what seemed absolutely
necessary, she immediately retired.

Colleton, with a sentiment of the deepest commiseration,
proceeded to reinstate things as they
might have been before the conflagration, and having
done so, and having soothed, as far as he well
might, the excited apprehensions of the young girl,
who made her acknowledgments in a not unbecoming
style, he ventured to ask a few questions
as to the condition of the old lady and of herself;
but finding from the answers that the subject
was not an agreeable one, and having no pretence
further to delay, he prepared to depart. He inquired,
however, his farther route to the Chestatee
river, and thus obtained a solution of the
difficulty which beset him in the choice of roads at
the fork.

While thus employed, however, and just at the
conclusion of his labours, there came another personage
upon the scene, to whom it is necessary that
we should direct some of our attention. It will be
remembered that Rivers and Munro, after the murder
of Forrester, had separated—the latter on his
return to the village—the other in a direction which
seemed to occasion some little dissatisfaction in the
mind of his companion. After thus separating,
Rivers, to whom the whole country was familiar,
taking a shorter route across the forest, by which
the sinuosities of the main road were generally
avoided, entered, after the progress of a few miles,
into the very path taken by Ralph Colleton, and
which, had it been chosen by his pursuers in the
first instance, must have entirely changed the features

of the whole transaction. In taking this
course it was not the thought of the outlaw to overtake
the individual whose blood he so much desired;
but with an object which will have its development
as we continue, he came to the cottage at the very
time when, having succeeded in overcoming the
flames, Ralph was employed in a task almost as
difficult—that of assuring the affrighted inmates of
the absence of any farther danger. With a caution
which old custom had made almost natural in
such cases, Rivers, as he approached the cross-roads,
concealed his horse in the cover of the
woods, advanced noiselessly, and with not a little
surprise to the cottage, whose externals had undergone
no little alteration from the loss of the shutter;
the blackened marks, visible enough in the moonlight,
around the window-frame, and the general
look of confusion which hung about it. A second
glance made out the steed of our traveller, which
he approached and examined. The survey awakened
all those emotions which operated upon his
spirit when referring to his successful rival; and
approaching the cottage with extreme caution, he
took post for awhile at one of the windows, the
shutter of which, partially unclosed, enabled him to
take in at a glance each particular of the entire
apartment. He saw, at once, the occasion which
had induced the presence, in this situation, of
his most hateful enemy; and the thoughts were
strangely discordant which thronged and possessed
his bosom. At one moment he had drawn his pistol
to his eye—his finger rested upon the trigger,
and the doubt which interposed between the youth
and eternity, though it sufficed for his safety then,
was of the most slight and shadowy description.
Again came a thought savagely sanguinary to his
soul, and the weapon's muzzle fell point blank
upon the devoted bosom of Ralph, when the slight
figure of the young woman passing between, again
arrested the design of the outlaw, who, with muttered
curses, uncocking, returned the weapon to
his belt. Whatever might have been the relationship
between him and these females, there was an
evident reluctance on the part of Rivers to exhibit
his ferocious hatred of the youth before those to
whom he had just rendered a great and unquestioned
service; and though untroubled by any feeling
of gratitude for them and for their escape, he
was yet unwilling, believing, as he did, that his
victim was now perfectly secure, that they should
undergo any further shock, at a moment too of
such severe suffering and trial as must follow with
the one, from those fatal pangs which were destroying
the other. Ralph now prepared to depart; and
taking leave of the young woman, who alone
seemed conscious of his services, and warmly
acknowledged them, he proceeded to the door.
Rivers, who had watched his motions attentively,
and heard the directions given him by the girl for
his progress, at the same moment proceeded from
the window, and placed himself under the shelter
of a huge tree, at a little distance on the path
which his enemy was directed to pursue. Here
he waited like the tiger, ready to take the fatal
leap, and plunge his fangs into the bosom of his
victim. Nor did he wait long. Ralph was soon
upon his steed, and on the road; but the Providence
that watches over and protects the innocent
was with him, and it happened, most fortunately,
that just before he reached the point at which his
enemy stood in watch, the badness of the road had
occasioned those who travelled it to diverge for a
few paces into a little sinuosity, which, at a little
distance on, and after the difficulty had been
rounded, brought them into it again. Upon this
“turn-out” (as it is technically called), Ralph entered,
and the tread of his horse warned the outlaw
of the change in his enemy's position. This
change did not at the moment trouble him much,
though, such was his temper, every thing which
had the effect of thwarting or restraining, though
for an instant, his desires, irritated him to madness.
He set about to retrieve the lost ground by passing
at once across the little copse which interposed between
the two paths. He had just gained a position
in it commanding the path, when the traveller
approached, moving on unconscious of all danger,
and happy with the pleasing excitement natural to
one who, solicitous of human happiness, has just
performed a good action. The pace of the youth
was slow and inattentive. The outlaw coolly prepared
his pistol as he approached—the huge tree,
under the shelter of which he lurked, effectually
concealed him, and his respiration grew restrained
at every step in Ralph's advance. At length the
form of man and horse grew fairly perceptible—it
was almost beside him—the deadly aim was taken
—the hand on the trigger, when suddenly, as the
horseman passed beneath the fatal tree, a huge pair
of wings, with a wild and flapping noise, rushed
from among its branches. The steed took flight,
and went headlong forward; while the outlaw,
seized upon for the first time in his life with a nameless
terror, in which his excited imagination took
an active part, dropped the fatal weapon, and for a
moment stood paralyzed. In a moment he was reassured,
when the cause of his affright was explained
in the uncouth hootings of the owl, whom
the tread of the horse's hoofs had expelled from the
quiet perch of his tree, and compelled to take shelter
in another. Cursing the youth's good fortune,
not less than his own weakness, the fierce passions
of Rivers were such that he gnashed his teeth in
something like delirium. Colleton, meanwhile, unconscious
of the danger which had awaited him,
was now fairly beyond all present pursuit, and so
frequently and completely had his enemy been
baffled in the brief progress of a single night, that
he was almost led to believe—for, like most criminals,
he too was not without his superstition—
that his foe was under some special guardianship.
With ill-concealed anger, and a stern impatience, he
turned away from the spot in which he had been
just foiled, and entered the dwelling, where we propose
also to return.