his companions, and, urging them
forward at a rapid flight, soon reached the diverging road, along which
they journeyed with unabated speed for upwards of a mile.

"How do you bear it, sister?" asked Henry, with concern.

"Ah, brother, with a sore heart to be made so painfully acquainted with
these frightful scenes. I lose all thought of my own annoyance, in
seeing the calamities that are heaped upon the unoffending family of a
man who dares to draw his sword for his country."

"Yes, ma'am," said Horse Shoe, gravely, "these incarnivorous devils have
broken the rest of many a good woman in the Carolinas, before they
routed you out to-night, ma'am. But it is one of God's marcies to see
how you keep up under it."

"Mine's a trifling grievance, good sergeant: I lose but a little repose:
that poor mother flies to save her children, uncertain, perhaps, of
to-morrow's subsistence; and her husband's life is in daily peril. It is
a sad lot. Yet truly," added Mildred with a sigh, "mine is scarcely
better. Gracious heaven!" she exclaimed, looking behind her, "they have
set fire to the dwelling!"

In the quarter to which she directed her eyes, the horizon was already
illuminated with the blaze of Wingate's hut. The light grew brighter for
a short interval, and brought into bold relief upon the sky, the tall,
dark forms of the stately pines of which the forest was composed.

"They are fools as well as villains," said Horse Shoe, with an angry
vehemence; "they have had liquor to-night, or they would hardly kindle
up a blaze which should rouse every Whig on Pedee to track them like
hounds. It would be sport worth riding to look at, if Marion should get
a glimpse of that fire. But these wolves have grown obstropolous ever
since Horatio Gates made his fox paw at Camden."

"Oh, it is a most savage war," said Mildred, "that roots up the humble
hearth, and fires the lowly roof, where none but defenceless women and
children abide. I shudder to think of such wanton barbarity."

"There's the thing, Miss Lindsay, that turns all our blood bitter. Man
to man is fair game, all the world over: but this ere stealing of
cattle, and burning of houses, and even cutting up by the roots the
plants of the 'arth, and turning of women and children naked into the
swamps, in the dead of night! it's a sorry business to tell of a
Christian people, and a cowardly business for a nation that's a boasting
of its bravery."

The light of the conflagration