lf rustic and half warlike, that
entered into the composition of the group; and, above all, the
manifestations of sincere and intense grief that were seen in every
member of the train, communicated to the incident a singularly
imaginative and unusual character. No words were spoken, except the few
orders of the march announced by Harry Winter in a whisper; and the ear
recognised, with a painful precision, the unceasing sobs of Mary
Musgrove, and the deep groan that seemed, unawares, to escape now and
then from some of the males of the party. The dull tramp of feet, and
the rusty creak of the wagon-wheels, or the crackling of brushwood
beneath them, and the monotonous clank of the chains employed in the
gearing of the horses, all broke upon the stillness of the night with a
more abrupt and observed distinctness, from the peculiar tone of feeling
which pervaded those who were engaged in the sad offices of the scene.

In the space of half an hour, the train had emerged from the wood upon a
small tract of open ground, that seemed to have been formerly cleared
from the forest for the purpose of cultivation. Whatever tillage might
have once existed there was now abandoned, and the space was overgrown
with brambles, through which the blind road still struggled by a track
that even in daylight it would have been difficult to pursue. Towards
the centre of this opening grew a cluster of low cherry and peach trees,
around whose roots a plentiful stock of wild scions had shot up in the
absence of culture. Close in the shade of this cluster, a ragged and
half-decayed paling formed a square inclosure of some ten or twelve
paces broad, and a few rude posts set up within, indicated the spot to
be the rustic grave-yard. Here two negroes were seen resting over a
newly-dug grave.

The wagon halted within some short distance of the paling, and the
coffin was now committed to the shoulders of the troopers. Following
these, the whole train of mourners entered the burial-place.

My reader will readily imagine with what fresh fervor the grief of poor
Mary broke forth, whilst standing on the verge of the pit in which were
to be entombed the remains of one so dear to her. The solemn interval or
pause which intervened between the arrival of the corpse at this spot,
and its being lowered into the ground, was one that was not signalized
only by the loud sorrow of her who here bore the part of chief mourner;
but all, even to the negroes who stood