or unity of purpose, such a force was considered adequate to all the
duties assigned it. There was but little of the pomp or circumstance of
military array in their appearance or approach. Though dressed uniformly
the gray and plain stuffs which they wore were more in unison with the
habit of the hunter than the warrior; and, as in that country, the rifle
is familiar as a household thing, the encounter with an individual of
the troop would perhaps call for no remark. The plaintive note of a
single bugle, at intervals reverberating wildly among the hills over
which the party wound its way, more than anything beside, indicated its
character; and even this accompaniment is so familiar as an appendage
with the southron--so common, particularly to the negroes, who acquire a
singular and sweet mastery over it, while driving their wagons through
the woods, or poling their boats down the streams, that one might fairly
doubt, with all these symbols, whether the advancing array were in fact
more military than civil in its character. They rode on briskly in the
direction of our contending parties--the sound of the bugle seeming not
only to enliven, but to shape their course, since the stout negro who
gave it breath rode considerably ahead of the troop.

Among the squatters there was but little time for deliberation, yet
never were their leaders more seriously in doubt as to the course most
proper for their adoption in the common danger. They well knew the
assigned duties of the guard, and felt their peril. It was necessary for
the common safety--or, rather, the common spoil--that something should
be determined upon immediately. They were now actually in arms, and
could no longer, appearing individually and at privileged occupations,
claim to be unobnoxious to the laws; and it need occasion no surprise in
the reader, if, among a people of the class we have described, the
measures chosen in the present exigency were of a character the most
desperate and reckless. Dexter, whose recent triumph gave him something
in the way of a title to speak first, thus delivered himself:--

"Well, Munro--you may thank the devil and the Georgia guard for getting
you out of that scrape. You owe both of them more now than you ever
calculated to owe them. Had they not come in sight just at the lucky
moment, my knife would have made mighty small work with your windpipe, I
tell you--it did lie so tempting beneath it."

"Yes--I thought myself a gone chick