University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.

KEEPING close in cover, Major Singleton and his guide paused
at length in the shelter of a giant oak,
that grew, with a hundred others, along the extreme
borders of the park-grounds. The position had been
judiciously taken, as it gave them an unobstructed
view of the Mansion House, the lawn in front, and a
portion of the adjacent garden. They were themselves
partial occupants of the finest ornament of the
estate—the extensive grove of solemn oaks, with arms
branching out on every side, sufficient each of them
for the shelter of a troop. They rose, thickly placed
all around the dwelling, concentrating in a beautiful
defile upon the front, and thus continuing for the distance
of a full mile until they gathered in mass upon the
main road of the country. In the rear they stretched
away singly or in groups, artfully disposed, but without
regularity, down to the very verge of the river, over
which many of them sloped with all their weight of
limbs and luxuriance upon them; their long-drooping
beard of white moss hanging down mournfully,
and dipping into the river at every pressure of the
wind upon the boughs, from which they depended. Under
one of these trees, the largest among them, the very
patriarch of the collection, the two adventurers paused;
Singleton throwing himself upon a cluster of the thick
roots which had risen above and now ran along the

surface, while his companion, like a true scout, wandered
off in other parts of the grove with the hope to
obtain intelligence, or at least to watch the movements
of the British officers, whose presence had prevented
their own approach to the dwelling.

As Singleton gazed around upon the prospect, the
whole scene grew fresh under his eye; and though
many years had elapsed since, in the buoyancy and
thoughtlessness of boyhood, he had rambled over it,
yet gradually old acquaintances grew again familiar to
his glance. The tree he knew again under which he
had formerly played. The lawn spread freely onward,
as of old, over which, in sweet company, he had once
gambolled—the little clump of shrubs, here and there,
still grew, as he had once known them; and his heart
grew softened amid its many cares, as his memory
brought to him those treasures of the past, which were
all his own when nothing of strife was in his fortunes.
What a god is memory, to keep in life—to endow with
an unslumbering vitality beyond that of our own nature
—its unconscious company—the things that seem only
born for its enjoyment—that have no tongues to make
themselves felt—and no claim upon it, only as they
have ministered, ignorant of their own value, to the
tastes and necessities of a superior! How more than
dear—how valuable are our recollections! How like
so many volumes, in which time has written on his
passage the history of the affections and the hopes.
Their names may be trampled upon in our passion,
blotted with our tears, thrown aside in our thoughtlessness,
but nothing of their sacred traces may be obliterated.
They are with us, for good or for evil, for
ever! They last us when the father and the mother
of our boyhood are gone. They bring them back as in
infancy. We are again at their knee—we prattle at
their feet—we see them smile upon, and we know
that they love us. How dear is such an assurance!
How sweetly, when the world has gone wrong with
us, when the lover is a heedless indifferent, when the
friend has been tried and found wanting, do they cluster

before our eyes as if they knew our desire, and strove to
minister to our necessities. True, they call forth our
tears, but they take the weight from our hearts. They
are never false to us,—better, far better, were we
more frequently true to them!

Such were the musings of Singleton, as, reclined
along the roots of the old tree, and sheltered by its
branches, his eye took in, and his memory revived, the
thousand scenes which he had once known of boyish
frolic, when life wore, if not a better aspect of hope
to his infant mind, at least a far less unpleasant show
of its many privations. Not a tree grew before him
which he did not remember for some little prank, or
incident; and a thousand circumstances were linked
with the various objects that, once familiar, were still
unforgotten. Nothing seemed to have undergone a
change—nothing seemed to have been impaired; the
touches of time upon the old oak had rather mellowed
into a fitting solemnity the aspect of that to which we
should scarcely ever look for a different expression.
While he yet mused, mingling in his mind the waters
of those sweet and bitter thoughts which make up the
life-tide of the wide ocean of memory, the dusk of
evening came on, soft in its solemnity, and unoppressive
even in its gloom, under the sweet sky and unmolested
zephyr, casting its pleasant shadows along the edges
of the grove. The moon, at the same time rising
stealthily among the tree-tops in the east, was seeking
to pale her ineffectual fires while yet some traces of
the sun were still bright in waving lines and fragments
upon the opposite horizon. Along the river, which
had a beating murmur upon the low banks, the breeze
skimmed playfully and fresh; and what with its pleasant
chidings, the hum of the tree-tops bending beneath
its embrace, and the still more certain appreciation
by his memory of the genius of the place, the
feeling of Singleton's bosom grew heightened in its
tone of melancholy, and a more passionate emphasis of
thought broke forth in his half-muttered soliloquy:—

“How I remember as I look; it is not only the

woods and the grounds—the river and the spot—but the
very skies are there; and that very wind, and the murmuring
voices of the trees, are all the same. Nothing
—nothing changed. All as of old, but the one—all but
she—she, the laughing child, the confiding playmate;
and not as now, the capricious woman—the imperious
heart, scorning where she once soothed, denying
where she was once so happy to bestow. Such is her
change—a change which the speechless nature itself
rebukes. She recks not now, as of old, whether her
word carries with it the sting or the sweet—it is not now
in her thought to ask whether pain or pleasure follows
the thoughtless slight or the scornful pleasantry.
The victim suffers, but she recks not of his grief. Yet
is she not an insensible—not proud, not scornful. Let
me do her justice in this. Let me not wrong her but
to think it. What but love, kindness, and all affection
is her tendance upon poor Emily. To her, is she not
all meekness, all love, all forbearance? To my uncle,
too, no daughter could be more dutiful, more affectionate,
more solicitously watchful. To all, to all but
me! To me, only, the proud, the capricious, the indifferent.
And yet, none love her like me; I must
love on in spite of pride, and scorn, and indifference—
I cannot choose but love her.”

The musings of Major Singleton had for their object
his fair cousin, the beautiful Kate—according to
his account, a most capricious damsel in some respects,
though well enough, it would appear, in others.
We shall see for ourselves, as we proceed. Meanwhile,
the return of Humphries from his scouting
expedition arrests our farther speculation upon this
topic, along with the soliloquy of our companion,
whose thoughts were now turned into another channel,
as he demanded from his lieutenant an account of his
discoveries.

“And what of the Britons, Humphries? are they
yet in saddle, and when may we hope to approach the
dwelling? I have not been used to skulk like a beaten
hound around the house of my mother's brother, not

daring to come forward, and, I am free to confess, the
necessity makes me melancholy.”

“Very apt to do so, major, but you have to bear it
a little longer. The horses of the officers have been
brought up into the court, and the boy is in waiting, but
the riders have not made their appearance. I suppose
they stop for a last swig at the squire's Madeira. He
keeps a prime stock on hand, they say, though I've
never had the good fortune to taste any of it.”

“You shall do so to-night, Humphries, and grow
wiser, unless your British Colonel's potations exceed
a southern gentleman's capacity to meet him. But
you knew my uncle long before coming down from
Santee with him.”

“To be sure I did, sir. I used to see him frequently
in the village; but since the fall of Charlestown
he has kept close to the plantation. They say he
goes nowhere now, except it be down towards Caneacre
and Horse Savannah, and along the Stonoe, where
he has acquaintance. I 'spose he has reason enough
to lie close, for he has too much wealth not to be an
object, and the tories keep a sharp look out on him.
Let him be suspected, and they'd have a pretty drive
at the old plate, and the negroes would soon be in the
Charlestown market, and then off to the West Indies.
Colonel Proctor is watchful too, and visits the squire
quite too frequently not to have some object.”

“Said you not that Kate, his daughter, Miss Walton,
was the object. Object enough, I should think,
for a hungry adventurer, sent out to make his fortune
in alliance with the very blood he seeks to shed. Kate
would be a pleasant acquisition for a younger son.”

There was something of bitterness in the tone of
the speaker on this subject, which told somewhat of
the strength of those suspicions in his mind, to which,
without intending so much, Humphries, in a previous remark,
had actually given the direction. The latter saw
this, and with a deliberate tact, not so much the work
of his education as of a natural delicacy, careful not
to startle the nice jealousies of Singleton, he hastened

to remove the impression which unwittingly he had
made. Without laying any stress upon what he said,
and with an expression of countenance the most indifferent,
he proceeded to reply as follows to the remark
of his companion:—

“Why, major, it would be a pleasant windfall to
Proctor could he get Miss Walton; but there's a mighty
small chance of that, if folks say true. He goes there
often enough, that's certain, but he doesn't see her half
the time. She keeps her chamber or takes herself off
in the carriage when she hears of his coming; and his
chance is slim even to meet with her, let 'lone to get
her.”

There was a tremulous lightness in Singleton's tone
as he spoke to this in oblique language—

“And yet Proctor has attractions, has he not? I
have somewhere heard so—a fine person, good features,
even handsome. He is young, too.”

“Few better looking men, sir, and making due allowance
for an enemy, a clever sort of fellow enough.
A good officer, too, that knows what he's about, and
quite a polite, fair-spoken gentleman.”

“Indeed! attractions quite enough, it would seem,
to persuade any young lady into civility. And yet,
you say—”

“Hist, major! `Talk of the —' Ask pardon, sir;
but drop behind this bush. Here comes the lady herself
with your sister, I believe, though I can't say at
this distance. They've been walking through the oaks,
and, as you see, Proctor keeps the house.”

The two sank into cover as the young ladies came
through the grove, bending their way towards the very
spot where Singleton had been reclining. The place
was a favourite with all, and the ramble in this quarter
was quite a regular custom of the afternoon with the
fair heiress of Colonel Walton in particular. As she
approached, they saw the lofty carriage, the graceful
height, and the symmetrical person of our heroine—
her movement bespeaking for her that degree of consideration
which few ever looked upon her and withheld.

Her dress was white, and simple, rather more in the
fashion of the present than of that time, when a lady's
body was hooped in like a ship's, by successive layers
of cordage and timber; and when her headgear rose
into a pyramid, tower upon tower, a massy and Babel-like
structure, well stuccoed, to keep its place, by the
pastes and pomatums of the day. With her dress,
the nicest stickler for the proper simplicities of good
taste would have found no cause of complaint. Setting
off her figure to advantage, it did not unpleasantly
confine it, and, as for her soft brown hair, it was free
to wanton in the winds, save where a strip of velvet
restrained it around her brows. Yet this simplicity
indicated no improper indifference on the part of the
lady to her personal appearance. On the contrary, it
was the art which concealed itself—the felicitous
taste, and the just estimate of a mind capable of conceiving
proper standards of fitness—that achieved so
much in the inexpressive yet attractive simplicity of
her costume. She knew that the elevated and intellectual
forehead needed no mountainous height of
hair for its proper effect. She compelled hers accordingly—simply
parting it in front—to play capriciously
behind; and, “heedful of beauty, the same
woman still,” the tresses that streamed so luxuriantly
about her neck, terminated in a hundred sylph-like
locks, exceedingly natural to behold, but which cost
her some half-hour's industrious application daily at
the toilet. Her eye was dark, richly brilliant in its
expression, though we look into its depths vainly for
that evidence of caprice and a wanton love of its exercise
which Singleton had rather insisted upon as
her characteristic. Her face was finely formed, delicately
clear and white, slightly pale, but marked still
with an appearance of perfect health, which preserved
that just medium the eye of taste loves to rest upon,
in which the rose rises not into the gaudy richness of
mere vulgar health, and is yet sufficiently present to
keep the cheek from falling into the opposite extreme,
the autumnal sickness of aspect, which, wanting in
the other, it is so very apt to assume.

Not so the companion beside her. Pale and
shadowy, the young girl, younger than herself, who
hung upon her arm, was one of the doomed victims of
consumption—that insidious death that sleeps with us,
and smiles with us—insidiously winds about us to lay
waste, and looks most lovely when most determined
to destroy. She was small and naturally slight of
person, but the artful disease under which she suffered
had made her more so; and her wasted form, the
evident fatigue of her movement, not to speak of the
pain and difficulty of her breathing, were all so many
proofs that the tenure of her life was insecure, and her
term brief. Yet few were ever more ready for this
final trial than the young lady before us. The heart
of Emily Singleton was as pure as her eyes were
gentle. Her affections were true, and her thoughts
had been long since turned only to heaven. Her own
condition had never been concealed from her, nor was
she disposed to shrink from its consideration. Doomed
to a brief existence, she wasted not the hours in painful
repinings at a fate so stern; but still regarding it as
inevitable, she prepared as calmly as possible to encounter
it. Fortunately, she had no strong passions
aroused and concentrated, binding her to the earth.
Love—that quick, angry, and eating fever of the mind—
had never touched the heart that, gentle from the first,
had been restrained from the indulgence of such a feeling
by the due consciousness of that destiny which
could not admit of its realization. Her mood had grown
loftier, sublimer, in due proportion with the check
which this consciousness had maintained upon her
sensibilities. She had become spiritualized in mind,
even as she had grown attenuated in person; and with
no murmurings, and but few regrets, her thoughts
were now only busied with those heavenward contemplations
which take the pang from death, and disarm
parting of many of its privations. Singleton looked

forth from his cover upon the form of his sister, while
the tears gathered in big drops into his eyes.

“So pure, so early doomed! Oh, my sweet sister!
—and when that comes, then am I indeed alone.
Poor Emily!”

Thus muttering to himself, as they came near, he
was about to emerge into sight and address them,
when, at the instant, Humphries caught his wrist, and
whispered—

“Stir not—move not. Proctor approaches, with
Colonel Walton and another. Our hope is in lying
close.”

The ladies turned to meet the new-comers. The
two British officers seemed already acquainted with
them, since they now advanced without any introduction.
Proctor, with the ease of a well-bred gentleman,
placed himself beside the fair heiress of the place, to
whom he tendered his arm; while his companion, Captain
Dickson of the guards, made a similar tender to
Emily. The latter quietly took the arm of Dickson,
releasing that of her cousin at the same moment.
But Kate seemed not disposed to avail herself of
her example. Civilly declining Proctor's offer, with
great composure she placed her arm within that of her
father, and the walk was continued. None of this had
escaped the notice of Major Singleton, whose place
of concealment was close beside the path; and, without
taking too many liberties with his confidence, we may
say that his feelings were those of pleasure as he
witnessed this proceeding of his cousin.

“I take no aid from mine enemy, Colonel Proctor—
certainly never when I can do without it. You will
excuse me, therefore; but I should regard your uniform
as having received its unnaturally deep red from
the veins of my countrymen.”

“So much a rebel as that, Miss Walton! It is
well for us that the same spirit does not prevail among
your warriors. What would have been our chances of
success had such been the case?”

“You think your conquest then complete, Colonel

Proctor—you think that our people will always sleep
under oppression, and return you thanks for blows,
and homage for chastisement. Believe so—it is quite
as well.”

“Do the ladies of Carolina all entertain this spirit,
Miss Walton? Will none of them take the aid of
the gallant knight that claims service at their hands?
or is it, as I believe, that she stands alone in this rebel
attitude, an exception to her countrywomen?”

“Nay; I cannot now answer you this question.
We see few of my countrywomen or countrymen now,
thanks to our enemies; and I have learned to forbear
asking what they need or desire. It is enough for me
that when I desire the arm of a good knight, I can have
him at need without resorting to that of an enemy!”

“Indeed!” replied the other, with some show of
curiosity—“indeed, you are fortunate; but your reference
is now to your father?”

“My father?—Oh, no! although, as now, I not unfrequently
claim his aid in preference to that of my foe.”

“Why your foe, Miss Walton? Have we not
brought you peace? There is no strife now in Carolina.”

“Peace, indeed! the peace of fear, that is kept from
action by chains and the dread of punishment! Call
you that peace? It is a peace that is false and cannot
last. You will see.”

“Be it as you say. Still we are no enemies—we
who serve your monarch as our own, and simply enforce
those laws which we are all bound in common to
obey.”

“No monarch of mine, if you please. I care not a
straw for him, and don't understand, and never could,
the pretensions of your kings and princes, your divine
rights, and your established and immutable systems of
human government, humanity itself being mutable,
hourly undergoing change, and hourly in advance of
government.”

“Why, this is to be a rebel; but we shall not dispute,
Miss Walton. It is well for us, as I have said

before, that such are not the sentiments of your warriors;
else, stimulated, as they must have been, by the
pleadings of lips like yours, they must have been invincible.
It will not indicate too much simplicity, if I
marvel that their utterance hitherto has availed so little
in bringing your men into the field. We have not
easily found our foes in a country in which, indeed, it
is our chief desire to find friends only.”

“It follows from this, Colonel Proctor, that there is
only so much more safety for his majesty's more loyal
subjects.”

“You are incorrigible, Miss Walton.”

“No, sir; only too indulgent—too like my countrymen—dreading
the combat which I yet see is a necessity.”

“If so, why has there been so little opposition?”

“Perhaps, sir, you will not always ask the question.”

“You still have hopes, then, of the rebel cause.”

“My country's cause, Colonel Proctor, if you please.
I still have hopes; and I trust that his majesty's arms
may not long have the regret of continuing a warfare
so little stimulating to their enterprise, and so little
calculated to yield them honour.”

The British colonel bowed at the equivocal sentiment,
and after a pause of a few moments the lady
proceeded—

“And yet, Colonel Proctor, not to speak too freely
of matters of which my sex can know so little, I must
say, knowing as I do the spirit of some among my
countrymen—I must say, it has greatly surprised me
that your conquests should have been usually so easy.”

“That need not surprise you, Miss Walton; you
remember that ours are British soldiers”—smiling,
and with a bow, was the response of the colonel.

“By which I am to understand, on the authority of
one of the parties, its own invincibility. It is with
your corps, I believe, that the sentiment runs, though
they do not—`we never retreat, we die.' Unquestionable
authority, surely; and it may be that such is the
case. Few persons think more highly of British vallour

than the Carolinians. Father, you, I know, think
extravagantly of it; and cousin Robert, too: I have
heard you both speak in terms which fully sustain you,
Colonel Proctor, in what might be called the self-complaisance
which just now assigned the cause of your
success.”

Colouring somewhat, and with a grave tone of voice,
that was not his wont, Colonel Proctor replied—

“There is truth in what I have told you, Miss
Walton; the British soldier fights with a perfect faith
in his invincibility, and this faith enables him to realize
it. The first lesson of the good officer is to prepare
the minds of his men with this confidence, not only in
their own valour, but in their own good fortune.”

“And yet, Colonel Proctor, I am not so sure that the
brave young men I have known, such as cousin Robert—the
major, for he is a major, father—so Emily
says—I am not so sure that they will fight the less
against you on that account. Robert I know too well
to believe that he has any fears, though he thinks as
highly of British valour as anybody else.”

“Who is this Robert, Miss Walton, of whom you
appear to think so highly?”

There was something of pique in the manner and
language of Proctor as he made the inquiry, and with
a singular change in her own manner, in which she
took her loftiest attitude and looked her sternest expression,
Katharine Walton replied—

“A relative, sir, a near relative; Robert Singleton—
Major Robert Singleton, I should say—a gentleman in
the commission of Governor Rutledge.”

“Ha! a major, too, and in the rebel army!” said
the other. “Well, Miss Walton, I may have the
honour, and hope some day to have the pleasure, to
meet with your cousin.”

The manner of the speaker was respectful, but
there was a something of sarcasm—so Katharine
thought—in his tones, and her reply was immediate.

“We need say nothing of the pleasure to either
party from the meeting, Colonel Proctor; but if you do

meet with him, knowing Robert as I do, you will most
probably, if you have time, remember this conversation.”

Proctor bit his lip. He could not misunderstand the
sinister meaning of her reply, but he said nothing;
and Colonel Walton, who had striven to check the
conversation at moments when he became conscious
of its tenor, now gladly engaged his guest on other
and more legitimate topics. He had been abstracted
during much of the time occupied by his daughter and
Proctor in their rather brusque dialogue; but even in
the more spirited portions of it, nothing was said by
the maiden that was not a familiar sentiment in the
mouths of those Carolinian ladies, who were proud to
share with their countrymen in the opprobrious epithet
of rebel, conferred on them in no stinted terms by their
invaders. Meanwhile Major Singleton, in his cover,
to whose ears portions of the dialogue had come, was
no little gladdened by what he had heard, and could not
forbear muttering to himself—“Now, bless the girl!
she is a jewel of a thousand.” But the dark was now
rapidly settling down upon the spot, and the dews, beginning
to fall, warned Kate of her duty to her invalid
cousin. Withdrawing her arm from her father, she
approached Emily, and reminded her of the propriety
of returning to the dwelling. Her feeble lips parted
in a murmured reply, all gentleness and dependence—

“Yes, Kate, you are right. I have been wishing it,
for I am rather tired. Do fix this handkerchief, cousin,
higher and close to my neck—there, that will do.”

She still retained Dickson's arm, while she passed
one of her hands through that of her cousin. In this
manner, followed by Colonels Walton and Proctor at
a little distance, the party moved away and returned to
the dwelling. Glad of his release from the close imprisonment
of his bush, the major now came forward
with Humphries, who, after a brief interval, stole along
by the inner fence, in the close shadow of the trees,
and with cautious movement reached a position which
enabled him to see when the British officers took their

departure. His delay to return, though not long protracted,
for the guests only waited to see the ladies
safely seated and to make their adieus, was, however,
an age to his companion. Singleton was impatient to
present himself to his fair cousin, whose dialogue with
Proctor had given him all the gratification which a
lover must always feel, who hears from the lips of her
he loves, not only those sentiments which his own
sense approves, but the general language of regard for
himself, even so slight and passing as that which had
fallen from his cousin in reference to him. She had
spoken in a tone and manner which was common, indeed,
to the better informed, the more elevated and
refined of the Carolina ladies at that period; when,
as full of patriotic daring as its sons, they warmed and
stimulated their adventurous courage, and undertook
missions of peril and privation, which are now on record
in honourable evidence of their fearlessness, sensibility,
and love of country. It was not long after this,
when his trusty lieutenant returned to him, giving him
the pleasing intelligence of the departure of Proctor
and his companion. Waiting for no messenger, Singleton
at once hurried to the dwelling of his uncle, and
leaving Humphries in the hall, in the passage-way
leading to the upper apartments the first person he met
was Kate.

“Why Robert, cousin Robert, is it you!”

The heart of the youth had been so much warmed
towards her by what he had heard in the previous dialogue,
that his manner and language had in them much
more of passionate warmth than was altogether customary
even with him.

“Dear, dear Kate, how I rejoice to see you!”

“Bless me, cousin, how affectionate you have become
all at once! There's no end to you—there—have
done with your squeezing. Hold my hand quietly, as
if you had no wish to carry off the fingers, and I will
conduct you to your sister.”

“And Emily?”

He urged the question in an under-tone, and the eyes

of his cousin were filled with tears as she replied
hastily—

“Is nigher heaven every day—but come.”

As they walked to an inner apartment, he told her
of his previous concealment, and the partial use he
had made of his ears while her chat with Proctor had
been going on.

“And you heard—what?”

“Not much, Kate; only that you have not deserted
your country yet, when so many are traitors to her.”

The light was not sufficient to enable him to see it,
but there was a rich flush upon the cheek of his companion
as he repeated some portions of the conversation
he had heard, which would have made him better
satisfied that her capriciousness was not so very permanent
in its nature. In a few moments they were in
the apartment where, extended upon a sofa, lay the
slight and shadowy person of Emily Singleton. Her
brother was beside her in an instant, and she was
wrapped in his arms.

“Emily—dear, dear sister—my only—my all!” he
exclaimed, as he pressed his lips warmly upon her
cheek.

“Dear Robert, you are come! I am glad, but release
me now—there.”

She breathed more freely,released from his embrace,
and he then gazed upon her with a painful sort of
pleasure, her look was so clear, so dazzling, so spiritual,
so unnaturally life-like.

“Sit by me,” she said. He drew a low bench, and
while he took his seat upon it, Katharine left the
room. Emily put her hand into that of her brother,
and looked into his face without speaking for several
minutes. His voice, too, was husky when he spoke,
so that, when his cousin had returned to the apartment,
though all feelings between them had been perfectly
understood, but few words had been said.

“Sit closer, brother—sit,” she said to him, fondly,
and motioned him to draw the bench beside her.
He did so, and in her feeble tones many were the

questions which the dying girl addressed to her companion.
All the domestic associations of her home
on the Santee—the home of her childhood and its
pleasures, when she had hopes and dreams of the future,
and disease had not yet shown upon her system.
To these questions his answers were made
with difficulty; many things had occurred, since her
departure, which would have been too trying for her
to hear. She found his replies unsatisfactory, therefore,
and she pressed them almost reproachfully—

“And you have told me nothing of old mommer,[1]
Robert: is she not well? does she not miss me?
did she not wish to come? And Frill, the pointer—
the poor dog—I wonder who feeds him now. I wish
you could have brought mommer with you, Robert—I
should like to have her attend on me, she knows my
ways and wishes so much better than anybody else.
I should not want her long.” And though she concluded
her desire with a reference to her approaching
fate, the sigh which followed was inaudible to her
brother.

“But you are well attended here, Emily, my dear.
Cousin Kate—”

“Is a sister, and all that I could desire, and I am as
well attended as I could be anywhere; but it is thus that
we repine. I only wished for mommer, as we wish
for an old-time prospect which has grown so familiar
to our eyes that it seems to form a part of the sight:
so, indeed, though every thing is beautiful and delightful

about `The Oaks,' I still long to ramble over our
old walks among the `Hills.”'

The brow of Singleton blackened as she thus passingly
alluded to the beautiful estate of his fathers, but
he said nothing, and she proceeded in her inquiries—

“And the garden, Robert—my garden, you know.
Do, when you go back, see that Luke keeps the box
trimmed, and the hedge; the morning I left it, it looked
very luxuriant. I was too hurried to give him orders,
but do you attend to it when you return. He is quite
too apt to leave it to itself.”

There was much in these simple matters to distress
her brother, of which she was fortunately ignorant.
How could he say to the dying girl, that her mommer,
severely beaten by the tories, had fled into the swamps
for shelter?—that her favourite dog, Frill, had been
shot down, as he ran, by the same brutal wretches?—
that the mansion-house of her parents, her favourite
garden, had been devastated by fire, applied by the
same cruel hands?—that Luke the gardener, and all
the slaves who remained unstolen, had fled for safety
into the thick recesses of the Santee?—how could he
tell her this? The ruin which had harrowed his own soul
almost to madness, would have been instant death to
her; and though the tears were with difficulty kept
back from his eyes, he replied calmly, and with sufficient
evasion successfully to deceive the sufferer.
At this moment Katharine re-entered the apartment,
and relieved him by her presence. He rose from the
bench, and prepared to attend upon his uncle, who as
yet remained in his chamber unapprized of his arrival.
He bent down, and his lips pressed once more upon
the brow of his sister. She put her hand into his,
and looked into his face for several minutes without
speaking; and that look—so pure, so bright, so fond—
so becoming of heaven, yet so hopeless of earth—he
could bear the gaze no longer; the emotion rose shiveringly
in his soul—the tears could be no longer kept
from gushing forth, and he hurried from her sight to
conceal them.

“Oh, why—why,” he said, in a burst of passionate
emotion, as he hurried below—“wherefore, great
Father of Mercies, wherefore is this doom? Why
should the good and the beautiful so early perish—why
should they perish at all? Sad, sad, that the creature
so made to love and be beloved, should have lived in
affliction, and died without having the feelings once exercised,
which in it have been so sweet and innocent.
Even death is beautiful and soft, seen in her eyes, and
gathering in words that come from her lips like the
dropping of so much music from heaven. Poor Emily!”