It would be difficult to describe the rage and fury of our captain
of loyalists when he made this discovery. The reader will
imagine it all. But what was to be done? Was the prey to
be entirely lost? And by what agency had Brough made his
escape? He had been securely fastened, it was thought, and
in such a way as seemed to render it impossible that he should
have been extricated from his bonds without the assistance of
another. This conjecture led to a renewal of the search. The
rope which fastened the negro lay on the ground, severed, as by
a knife, in several places. Now, Brough could not use his
hands. If he could, there would have been no sort of necessity
for using his knife. Clearly, he had found succor from another
agency than his own. Once more our loyalists darted into the
recesses of Bear Castle; their torches were to be seen flaring
in every part of that dense patch of swamp-forest, as they
waved them over every spot which seemed to promise concealment
to the fugitive.

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“Hark!” cried Dunbar, whose ears were quickened by eager
and baffled passions. “Hark! I hear the dip of a paddle.”

He was right. They darted forth from the woods, and when
they reached the river's edge, they had a glimpse of a small
dark object, which they readily conceived to be a canoe, just
rounding one of the projections of the shore and going out of
sight, full a hundred yards below. Here was another mystery.
The ramifications of Bear Castle seemed numerous; and, mystified
as well as mortified, Dunbar, after a tedious delay and a
search fruitlessly renewed, took up the line of march back for old
Sabb's cottage, inly resolved to bring the fair Frederica to terms,
or, in some way, to make her pay the penalty for his disappointments
of the night. He little dreamed how much she had to do
with them, or that her hand had fired the forest-grasses, whose
wild and terrific blaze had first excited the apprehensions and
compelled the caution of the fugitives. It is for us to show
what further agency she exercised in this nocturnal history.

We left her alone, in her little dug-out, paddling or drifting
down the river with the stream. She pursued this progress
with proper caution. In approaching the headlands around
which the river swept, on that side which was occupied by Dunbar,
she suspended the strokes of her paddle, leaving her silent
boat to the direction of the currents. The night was clear and
beautiful and the river undefaced by shadow, except when the
current bore her beneath the overhanging willows which grew
numerously along the margin, or when the winds flung great
masses of smoke from the burning woods across its bright, smooth
surface. With these exceptions, the stream shone in a light not
less clear and beautiful because vague and capricious. Moonlight
and starlight seem to make a special atmosphere for youth, and
the heart which loves, even when most troubled with anxieties
for the beloved one, never, at such a season, proves wholly
insensible to the soft, seductive influences of such an atmosphere.
Our Frederica was not the heroine of convention. She had
never imbibed romance from books; but she had affections out
of which books might be written, filled with all those qualities
at once strong and tender, which make the heroine in the moment
of emergency. Her heart softened as, seated in the centre
of her little vessel, she watched the soft light upon the

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wave, or beheld it dripping, in bright, light droplets, like fairy
glimpses, through the overhanging foliage. Of fear — fear for
herself — she had no feeling. Her apprehensions were all for
Richard Coulter, and her anxieties increased as she approached
the celebrated promontory and swamp-forest, known to this
day upon the river as “Bear Castle.” She might be too late.
The captain of the loyalists had the start of her, and her only
hope lay in the difficulties by which he must be delayed, going
through a blind forest and under imperfect guidance — for she
still had large hopes of Brough's fidelity. She was too late —
too late for her purpose; which had been to forewarn her lover
in season for his escape. She was drifting toward the spot
where the river, at full seasons, made across the low neck by
which the promontory of “Bear Castle” was united with the
main land. Her paddle no longer dipped the water, but was
employed solely to protect her from the overhanging branches
beneath which she now prepared to steer. It was at her approach
to this point that she was suddenly roused to apprehension
by the ominous warning chant set up by the African.

“Poor Brough! what can they be doing with him?” was her
question to herself. But the next moment she discovered that
this howl was meant to be a hymn; and the peculiar volume
which the negro gave to his utterance, led her to divine its import.
There was little time allowed her for reflection. A moment
after, and just when her boat was abreast of the bayou which
Dunbar and his men were required to cross in penetrating the
place of refuge, she heard the sudden pistol shooting under which
Coulter had fallen. With a heart full of terror, trembling with
anxiety and fear, Frederica had the strength of will to remain
quiet for the present. Seizing upon an overhanging bough, she
lay concealed within the shadow of the copse until the loyalists
had rushed across the bayou, and were busy, with lighted torches,
exploring the thickets. She had heard the bugle of Coulter
sounded as he was about to fall, after being wounded, and her
quick consciousness readily enabled her to recognise it as her
lover's. But she had heard no movement afterward in the quarter
from which came the blast, and could not conceive that he
should have made his way to join his comrades in the space of
time allowed between that and the moment when she heard

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them taking to the river with their horses. This difficulty led
to new fears, which were agonizing enough, but not of a sort to
make her forgetful of what was due to the person whom she
came to save. She waited only until the torrent had passed the
straits — until the bayou was silent — when she fastened her
little boat to the willows which completely enveloped her, and
boldly stepped upon the land. With a rare instinct which proved
how deeply her heart had interested itself in the operations of
her senses, she moved directly to the spot whence she had heard
the bugle-note of her lover. The place was not far distant from
the point where she had been in lurking. Her progress was arrested
by the prostrate trunk of a great cypress, which the hurricane
might have cast down some fifty years before. It was
with some difficulty that she scrambled over it; but while crossing
it she heard a faint murmur, like the voice of one in pain,
laboring to speak or cry aloud. Her heart misgave her. She
hurried to the spot. Again the murmur — now certainly a moan.
It is at her feet, but on the opposite side of the cypress, which
she again crosses. The place was very dark, and in the moment
when, from loss of blood, he was losing consciousness, Richard
Coulter had carefully crawled close to the cypress, whose bulk,
in this way, effectually covered him from passing footsteps. She
found him, still warm, the flow of blood arrested, and his consciousness
returning.

“Richard! it is me — Frederica!”

He only sighed. It required but an instant for reflection on
the part of the damsel; and rising from the place where she had
crouched beside him, she darted away to the upper grounds where
Brough still continued to pour out his dismal ejaculations — now
of psalms and song, and now of mere whoop, halloo and imprecation.
A full heart and a light foot make quick progress
when they go together. It was necessary that Frederica should
lose no time. She had every reason to suppose that, failing to
secure their prey, the tories would suffer no delay in the thicket.
Fortunately, the continued cries of Brough left her at no time
doubtful of his where-abouts. She soon found him, fastened to
his tree, in a state sufficiently uncomfortable for one whose ambition
did not at all incline him to martyrdom of any sort. Yet
martyrdom was now his fear. His first impulses, which had given

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the alarm to the patriots, were succeeded by feelings of no pleasant
character. He had already had a taste of Dunbar's punishments,
and he dreaded still worse at his hands. The feeling
which had changed his howl of warning into one of lament —
his whoop into a psalm — was one accordingly of preparation.
He was preparing himself, as well as he could, after his African
fashion, for the short cord and the sudden shrift, from which he
had already so narrowly escaped.

Nothing could exceed the fellow's rejoicing as he became
aware of the character of his new visiter.

“Oh, Missis! Da's you? Loose 'em! Cut you' nigger loose!
Le' 'em run! Sich a run! you nebber see de like! I take dese
woods, dis yer night, Mat Dunbar nebber see me 'gen long as
he lib! Ha! ha! Cut! cut, missis! cut quick! de rope is work
into my berry bones!”

“But I have no knife, Brough.”

“No knife! Da's wha' woman good for! No hab knife!
Take you teet', misses — gnaw de rope. Psho! wha' I tell
you? Stop! Put you' han' in dis yer pocket — you fin' knife,
if I no loss em in de run.”

The knife was found, the rope cut, the negro free, all in much
less time than we have taken for the narration; and, hurrying
the African with her, Frederica was soon again beside the person
of her lover. To assist Brough in taking him upon his back, to
help sustain the still partially insensible man in this position until
he could be carried to the boat, was a work of quick resolve,
which required, however, considerable time for performance. But
patience and courage, when sustained by love, become wonderful
powers; and Richard Coulter, whose moans increased with
his increasing sensibility, was finally laid down in the bottom of
the dug-out, his head resting in the lap of Frederica. The boat
could hold no more. The faithful Brough, pushing her out into
the stream, with his hand still resting on stern or gunwale, swam
along with her, as she quietly floated with the currents. We
have seen the narrow escape which the little vessel had, as she
rounded the headland below, just as Dunbar came down upon
the beach. Had he been there when the canoe first began to
round the point, it would have been easy to have captured the
whole party; since the stream, somewhat narrow at this place,

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set in for the shore which the tories occupied, and a stout swimmer
might have easily drawn the little argosy upon the banks.