affectionate
husband, and the heroic defender of the family, had fallen a sacrifice,
probably in the endurance of tortures on which the imagination dared not
to dwell. Under the influence of griefs like these, next to the
unfailing resource of religion, the heart naturally turns to the
sympathy and society of those bound to it by the ties of nature and
affinity. They returned to their friends in North Carolina.

It was nearly five years since this now desolate family had started in
company with the first emigrating party of families, in high hopes and
spirits, for Kentucky. We have narrated their disastrous rencounter with
the Indians in Powell's valley, and their desponding return to Clinch
river. We have seen their subsequent return to Boonesborough, on
Kentucky river. Tidings of the party thus far had reached the relatives
of Mrs. Boone's family in North Carolina; but no news from the country
west of the Alleghanies had subsequently reached them. All was uncertain
conjecture, whether they still lived, or had perished by famine, wild
beasts, or the Indians.

At the close of the summer of 1778, the settlement on the Yadkin saw a
company on pack horses approaching in the direction from the western
wilderness. They had often seen parties of emigrants departing in that
direction, but it was a novel spectacle to see one return from that
quarter. At the head of that company was a blooming youth, scarcely yet
arrived at the age of manhood. It was the eldest surviving son of Daniel
Boone. Next behind him was a matronly woman, in weeds, and with a
countenance of deep dejection. It was Mrs. Boone. Still behind was the
daughter who had been a captive with the Indians. The remaining children
were too young to feel deeply. The whole group was respectable in
appearance, though clad in skins, and the primitive habiliments of the
wilderness. It might almost have been mistaken for a funeral
procession. It stopped at the house of Mr. Bryan, the father of Mrs.
Boone.

The people of the settlement were not long in collecting to hear news
from the west, and learn the fate of their former favorite, Boone, and
his family. As Mrs. Boone, in simple and backwood's phrase, related the
thrilling story of their adventures, which needed no trick of venal
eloquence to convey it to the heart, an abundant tribute of tears from
the hearers convinced the bereaved narrator that true sympathy is
natural to the human heart. As they shuddered at the da