the ease and confidence of one familiarized to the exploit. When
mounted, she appeared to great advantage. She was an expert rider, and
managed her horse with a dexterous grace. The very position of command
and authority which her saddle gave her, seemed to raise her spirits
into a happier elevation.

"Follow me, Mister Stephen," she said, "I have service for you. And it
will not be out of the fashion of the time that a lady should be
'squired by an armed soldier. We take the road down the river. Have a
care, brother, how you bound off at the start--the hill is steep, and a
horse's foot is not over sure when pressed too rapidly on the descent."

The cavalcade descended the hill, crossed the ford, and then took a
direction down the stream, by the road that led beneath the Fawn's
Tower. Mildred sighed as she gazed around her, and saw the spot of her
last meeting with Butler. The little skiff by which her lover had glided
across the water, now lay upon a dry bed of rock, in the same position,
perhaps, where a month ago he had left it. The summer drought had
reduced the stream, and deprived the light boat (whose tackle kept it
prisoner to the root of the sycamore) of the element on which it had
floated. This spectacle suggested to Mildred's thoughts a melancholy
image. "Even thus," she muttered to herself, "have I been left by him.
He has gone to obey the calls of honor and duty, and I, fettered to my
native woods, have seen the stream of happiness roll by, one while
swollen to a torrent, and again dried up by the fervid heat of war,
until, like this sun-withered bark, I have been left upon the shore,
without one drop of that clear current on which alone I hoped to live.
Come hither, Stephen," she said, as she slackened the rein of her horse:
and the obedient attendant was immediately at her side.

"You set out southwards, with your comrades of the troop, in a few
days?"

"Orders may come to-morrow," replied Foster.

"It is no holiday game that you are going to play," continued the lady.

"When Congress cut out this here war for us, Miss Mildred," answered the
hunter, "they didn't count upon settling of it without making some tall
fellows the shorter. And it is my opinion that it is a p'int of
conscience that every man should take his spell of the work."

"You go to it with a good heart," said Mildred. "We women can only pray
for you, lieutenant."

"I shall pull trigger with a steadier hand, ma'am, when I think th