terest that would, if time and space permitted me, have
justified the detail of a volume, I go back to the regular current of my
story.

CHAPTER LV.

THE WHIGS CONTINUE THEIR MARCH.--MILDRED IS LEFT BEHIND.

The army of mountaineers halted at Gilbert-town only until a vidette
from Williams brought tidings of Ferguson's late movements. These
reached Campbell early in the day succeeding his arrival at the village,
and apprised him that Williams followed on the footsteps of the British
partisan, and would expect to unite his force with that of the allied
volunteers at the Cowpens--(a field not yet distinguished in
story)--whither he expected to arrive on the following day. Campbell
determined, in consequence, to hasten to this quarter.

The present position of Mildred, notwithstanding the kind sympathy with
which every one regarded her, was one that wrought severely upon her
feelings. She had heretofore encountered the hardships of her journey,
and borne herself through the trials, so unaccustomed to her sex, with a
spirit that had quailed before no obstacle. But now, finding herself in
the train of an army just moving forth to meet its enemy, with all the
vicissitudes and peril of battle in prospect, it was with a sinking of
the heart she had not hitherto known, that she felt herself called upon
to choose between the alternative of accompanying them in their march,
or being left behind. To adopt the first resolve, she was painfully
conscious would bring her to witness scenes, and perhaps endure
privations, the very thought of which made her shudder; whilst, to
remain at a distance from the theatre of events in which she was so
deeply concerned, was a thought that suggested many anxious fears, not
less intolerable than the untried sufferings of the campaign. She had,
thus far, braved all dangers for the sake of being near to Butler; and
now to hesitate or stay her step, when she had almost reached the very
spot of his captivity, and when the fortunes of war might soon throw her
into his actual presence, seemed to her like abandoning her duty at the
most critical moment of trial. She was aware that he was in the camp of
the enemy; that this enemy was likely to be overtaken and brought to
combat; and it was with a magnified terror that she summoned up to her
imagination the possible mischances which might befal Arthur Butler in
the infliction of some summary act of vengeance provoked by the
exasperation of confli