Chapter 30

And here, forlorn and lost, I tread,
With fainting steps, and slow;
Where wilds, immeasurably spread,
Seem length'ning as I go.
--GOLDSMITH.

The night had set in dark and chilling, as Frances Wharton, with a
beating heart but light step, moved through the little garden that lay
behind the farmhouse which had been her brother's prison, and took her
way to the foot of the mountain, where she had seen the figure of him
she supposed to be the peddler. It was still early, but the darkness and
the dreary nature of a November evening would, at any other moment, or
with less inducement to exertion, have driven her back in terror to the
circle she had left. Without pausing to reflect, however, she flew over
the ground with a rapidity that seemed to bid defiance to all
impediments, nor stopped even to breathe, until she had gone half the
distance to the rock that she had marked as the spot where Birch made
his appearance on that very morning.

The good treatment of their women is the surest evidence that a people
can give of their civilization; and there is no nation which has more to
boast of, in this respect, than the Americans. Frances felt but little
apprehension from the orderly and quiet troops who were taking their
evening's repast on the side of the highway, opposite to the field
through which she was flying. They were her countrymen, and she knew
that her sex would be respected by the Eastern militia, who composed
this body; but in the volatile and reckless character of the Southern
horse she had less confidence. Outrages of any description were seldom
committed by the really American soldiery; but she recoiled, with
exquisite delicacy, from even the appearance of humiliation. When,
therefore, she heard the footsteps of a horse moving slowly up the road,
she shrank, timidly, into a little thicket of wood which grew around
the spring that bubbled from the side of a hillock near her. The
vidette, for such it proved to be, passed her without noticing her form,
which was so enveloped as to be as little conspicuous as possible,
humming a low air to himself, and probably thinking of some other fair
that he had left on the banks of the Potomac.

Frances listened anxiously to the retreating footsteps of his horse,
and, as they died upon her ear, she ventured from her place of secrecy,
and advanced a short distance into the field, where, startled at the
gloom, and appalled with the dreariness of the prospect, she paused to
reflect on what she had undertaken. Throwing back the hood of her
cardinal, she sought the support of a tree, and gazed towards the summit
of the mountain that was to be the goal of her enterprise. It rose from
the plain like a huge pyramid, giving nothing to the eye but its