It would be difficult to describe the rage and fury of our captain of loyalists when he made this discovery. The reader will imagine it all. But what was to be done? Was the prey to be entirely lost? And by what agency had Brough made his escape? He had been securely fastened, it was thought, and in such a way as seemed to render it impossible that he should have been extricated from his bonds without the assistance of another. This conjecture led to a renewal of the search. The rope which fastened the negro lay upon the ground, severed, as by a knife, in several places. Now, Brough could not use his hands. If he could, there would have been no sort of necessity for using his knife. Clearly, he had found succor from another agency than his own. Once more our loyalists darted into the recesses of Bear Castle, their torches were to be seen flaring in every part of that dense patch of swamp forest, as they waved them over every spot which seemed to promise concealment to the fugitive.

“Hark!” cried Dunbar, whose ears were quickened by eager and baffled passions. “Hark! I hear the dip of a paddle.”

He was right. They darted forth from the woods, and when they reached the river’s edge, they had a glimpse of a small dark object, which they readily conceived to be a canoe, just rounding one of the projections of the shore and going out of sight, a full hundred yards below. Here was another mystery. The ramifications of Bear Castle seemed numerous; and, mystified as well as mortified, Dunbar, after a tedious delay, and a search fruitlessly renewed, took up the line of march back for old Sabb’s cottage, inly resolved to bring the fair Frederica to terms, or, in some way, to make her pay the penalty for his disappointments of the night. He little dreamed how much she had to do with them, nor that her hand had fired the forest grasses, whose wild and terrific blaze had first excited the apprehensions and compelled the caution of the fugitives. It is for us to show what further agency she exercised in this nocturnal history.

We left her, alone, in her little dug-out, paddling or drifting down the river with the stream. She pursued this progress with proper caution. In approaching the headlands around which the river swept, on that side which was occupied by Dunbar, she suspended the strokes of her paddle, leaving her silent boat to the direction of the currents. The night was clear and beautiful, and the river undefaced by shadow, except when the current bore her beneath the overhanging willows which grew numerously along the margin, or when the winds flung great masses of smoke from the burning woods across its bright, smooth surface. With these exceptions, the river shone in a light not less clear and beautiful because vague and capricious. Moonlight and starlight seem to make a special atmosphere for youth, and the heart which loves, even when most troubled with anxieties for the beloved one, never, at such a season, proves wholly insensible to the soft, seductive influences of such an atmosphere. Our Frederica was not the heroine of convention. She had never imbibed romance from books; but she had affections out of which books might be written, filled with all those qualities, at once strong and tender, which make the heroine in the moment of emergency. Her heart softened, as, seated in the centre of her little vessel, she watched the soft light upon the wave, or beheld it dripping, in bright, light droplets, like fairy glimmers, through the over-hanging foliage. Of fear—fear for herself—she had no feeling. Her apprehensions were all for Richard Coulter, and her anxieties increased as she approached the celebrated promontory and swamp forest, known to this day upon the river as “Bear Castle.” She might be too late. The captain of the loyalists had the start of her, and her only hope lay in the difficulties by which he must be delayed, going through a blind forest and under imperfect guidance—for she still had large hopes of Brough’s fidelity. She was too late—too late for her purpose, which had been to forewarn her lover in season for his escape. She was drifting toward the spot where the river, at full seasons, made across the low neck by which the promontory of “Bear Castle” was united with the main land. Her paddle no longer dipt the water, but was employed solely to protect her from the overhanging branches beneath which she now prepared to steer. It was at her approach to this point, that she was suddenly roused to apprehension by the ominous warning chant set up by the African.

“Poor Brough! what can they be doing with him?” was her question to herself. But the next moment she discovered that his howl was meant to be a hymn; and the peculiar volume which the negro gave to his utterance, led her to divine its import. There was little time allowed her for reflection. A moment after, and just when her boat was abreast of the bayou which Dunbar and his men were required to cross in penetrating the place of refuge, she heard the sudden pistol shooting under which Coulter had fallen. With a heart full of terror, trembling with anxiety and fear, Frederica had the strength of will to remain quiet for the present. Seizing upon an overhanging bough, she lay concealed within the shadow of the copse until the loyalists had rushed across the bayou, and were busy, with lighted torches, exploring the thickets. She had heard the bugle of Coulter sounded as he was about to fall, after being wounded, and her quick consciousness readily enabled her to recognize it as her lover’s. But she had heard no movement afterward in the quarter from which came the blast, and could not conceive that he should have made his way to join his comrades in the space of time allowed between that and the moment when she heard them taking to the river with their horses. This difficulty led to new fears, which were agonizing enough, but not of a sort to make her forgetful of what was due to the person whom she came to save. She waited only until the torrent had passed the straits—until the bayou was silent—when she fastened her little boat to the willows which completely enveloped her, and boldly stepped upon the land. With a rare instinct which proved how deeply her heart had interested itself in the operations of her senses, she moved directly to the spot whence she had heard the bugle-note of her lover. The place was not far distant from the point where she had been in lurking. Her progress was arrested by the prostrate trunk of a great cypress, which the hurricane might have cast down some fifty years before. It was with some difficulty that she scrambled over it; but while crossing it she heard a faint murmur, like the voice of one in pain, laboring to speak or cry aloud. Her heart misgave her. She hurried to the spot. Again the murmur—now certainly a moan. It is at her feet, but on the opposite side of the cypress, which she again crosses. The place was very dark, and in the moment when, from loss of blood, he was losing consciousness, Richard Coulter had carefully crawled close to the cypress, whose bulk, in this way, effectually covered him from passing footsteps. She found him, still warm, the flow of blood arrested, and his consciousness returning.

“Richard! it is me—Frederica!”

He only sighed. It required but an instant for reflection on the part of the damsel; and rising from the place where she had crouched beside him, she darted away to the upper grounds where Brough still continued to pour out his dismal ejaculations—now of psalms and song, and now of mere whoop, halloo, and imprecation. A full heart and a light foot make quick progress when they go together. It was necessary that Frederica should lose no time. She had every reason to suppose that, failing to secure their prey, the tories would suffer no delay in the thicket. Fortunately, the continued cries of Brough left her at no time doubtful of his whereabouts. She soon found him, fastened to his tree, in a state sufficiently uncomfortable for one whose ambition did not at all incline him to martyrdom of any sort. Yet martyrdom was now his fear. His first impulses, which had given the alarm to the patriots, were succeeded by feelings of no pleasant character. He had already had a taste of Dunbar’s punishments, and he dreaded still worse at his hands. The feeling which had changed his howl of warning into one of lament—his whoop into a psalm—was one accordingly of preparation. He was preparing himself, as well as he could, after his African fashion, for the short cord and the sudden shrift, from which he had already so narrowly escaped.

Nothing could exceed the fellow’s rejoicing as he became aware of the character of his new visiter.

“Oh, Misses! Da’s you? Loose ’em! Cut you’ nigger loose! Let ’em run! Sich a run! you nebber see de like! I take dese woods, dis yer night, Mat Dunbar nebber see me ’gen long as he lib! Ha! ha! Cut! cut, misses! cut quick! de rope is work into my berry bones!”

“But I have no knife, Brough.”

“No knife! Da’s wha’ woman good for! No hab knife! Take you teet’, misses—gnaw de rope. Psho! wha’ I tell you? Stop! Put you’ han’ in dis yer pocket—you fin’ knife, if I no loss ’em in de run.”

The knife was found, the rope cut, the negro free, all in much less time than we have taken for the narration; and hurrying the African with her, Frederica was soon again beside the person of her lover. To assist Brough in taking him upon his back, to help sustain the still partially insensible man in this position until he could be carried to the boat, was a work of quick resolve, which required, however, considerable time for performance. But patience and courage, when sustained by love, become wonderful powers; and Richard Coulter, whose moans increased with his increasing sensibility, was finally laid down in the bottom of the dug-out, his head resting in the lap of Frederica. The boat could hold no more. The faithful Brough, pushing her out into the stream, with his hand still resting on stern or gunwale, swam along with her, as she quietly floated with the currents. We have seen the narrow escape which the little vessel had as she rounded the headland below, just as Dunbar came down upon the beach. Had he been there when the canoe first began to round the point, it would have been easy to have captured the whole party, since the stream, somewhat narrow at this place, set in for the shore which the tories occupied, and a stout swimmer might have easily drawn the little argosy upon the banks.

——