"There are difficulties in the way, Colonel Burr," answered the lady of the island, coloring deeply. "Her father, one of the most influential citizens of Marietta, entertains a violent prejudice against you." "We want nothing to do with him, then," said Theodosia, sharply. "Ah, my dear child, there are many good men who do not know Aaron Burr as you know him, and whose political antipathies we must tolerate. But his antagonism need not prevent his peerless daughter from accepting the coronet of a countess." "Countess!" exclaimed Theodosia. "Is this young woman a sorceress? Has she bewitched you?" Mrs. Blennerhassett glimpsed her own image in the mirror. "Perhaps Colonel Burr anticipates raising the countess to the throne of an empire." "I will have a voice in that, and so will Gampy," declared Theodosia, with a merry laugh. "The succession is fixed." "You should become acquainted with Miss Evaleen Hale, Mrs. Alston. Evaleen is my most intimate friend. She is now in much anxiety on account of an uncle in New Orleans, a wealthy merchant, who was stabbed in the back by a drunken Spaniard. The wound caused partial paralysis, and Richard Hale desires his niece, who has always been a favorite, to come and attend him in his helpless condition. Several urgent letters have decided her to make the tedious and not altogether safe journey down the river on a barge, which is to start from Marietta within six weeks." "Did I not say the gods are propitious?" broke in Burr; "Miss Hale is going our way at an opportune time. Her rich uncle will bequeath her his fortune and go to Heaven; she will take the money and go to Mexico." XV. THERE BE LAND RATS AND WATER RATS. At some distance north of Natchez, and below the third Chickasaw bluff, near the bank of one of the bayous, which seem to run from rather than toward the Mississippi, a band of desperadoes had established a temporary abode, sometime in the year 1805. They were an organized league of robbers, bandits of stream and shore, preying on the solitary traveller who rode through the pines on the way between Natchez and the North, and more frequently surprising the unwary farmer or trader, transporting goods to market by water. A number of flatboats laden with the plunder of the freebooters lay moored close to the north shore, under the shelter of the overhanging bushes, at the distance of a mile or two up this narrow but deep creek. Farther up the bayou, and a few rods from it, in an obscure hollow and almost hidden by cypress trees, from which depended curtains and streamers of gray Spanish moss, stood a log building, the rendezvous of the outlaws. The structure was low and long, consisting of three huts so joined as to look like one.