ll exhibited the
traces of her recent fatigue; and upon the earnest recommendation of
Mrs. Markham, seconded by the almost oracular authority of Horse
Shoe,--for the sergeant had greatly won upon the respect of his
companions by his prudence and discretion--she determined to remain
another day in her present resting-place.

Mrs. Markham was the widow of a Carolina gentleman, who had borne the
rank of a colonel in the Whig militia, and had been actively employed,
in the earlier stages of the war, in the southern provinces. He had
fallen in an unfortunate skirmish with some of Prevost's light troops,
on the Savannah river, some sixteen months before; and his widow, with
three daughters and no other male protector than an only son, was now,
in this season of extreme peril, residing upon a large estate, which the
evil fortune of the times had made the theatre of an eventful and active
desultory war. She had been exposed to the most cruel exactions from the
Tories, to whom her possessions were generally yielded up with a passive
and helpless submission; and the firmness with which, in all her
difficulties, she had adhered to the cause for which her husband fell,
had gained for her the generous sympathy of the whig leaders, and more
than once stimulated them to enterprises, in her behalf, that were
followed by severe chastisement upon her enemies. These circumstances
had given extensive notoriety to her name, and drawn largely upon her
the observation of both friend and foe. To Marion, who hovered upon this
border more like a goblin than a champion whose footsteps might be
tracked, her protection had become a subject of peculiar interest; and
the indefatigable soldier frequently started up in her neighborhood when
danger was at hand, with a mysterious form of opposition that equally
defied the calculations of Whigs and Tories.

The lady was still in her weeds, and grief and care had thrown a pallor
upon her cheek; but the watchfulness imposed upon her by the emergencies
of the day, her familiarity with alarms, and the necessity for constant
foresight and decisive action, had infused a certain hardihood into her
character, that is seldom believed to be,--but yet in the hour of trial
unerringly exhibits itself--an attribute of the female bosom. Her
manners were considerate, kind, and fraught with dignity. She was the
personation of a class of matrons that--for the honor of our country and
of the human race--was not small in it