This arrangement seemed to meet the views of the other, as he made no objections to it, but after some minor matters had been disposed of, the two prepared to separate. Shaking his companion heartily by the hand, the younger of the friends struck into the forest in the same direction as that from which we saw him emerge. The other gazed after him until he became lost in the darkness of the shadows, and then striking into the wood in the opposite direction, he proceeded for some distance with hasty steps, until he gained a spot more densely shaded than usual. Parting the branches, he entered the enclosure, and in a few moments came forth leading a horse, which he immediately mounted, and plunged more deeply into the wood. Leaving our two friends to the fulfillment of their tasks, we must give the reader some account of the circumstances that preceded their introduction to us. William Seaton, the hero of our narrative, was the only child of one of the oldest families in the South. At the breaking out of the war of the Revolution, his father took a firm and decided stand in the defense of the rights of the Colonists, and sealed that defense with his blood. He fell at the Siege of Charleston, bequeathing to his son the care of a mother. With the same bold and fearless love of his native land that distinguished his sire, young Seaton, on the receipt of this intelligence, hastened home from the little band of men to which he belonged, and bearing his mother to a place of safety, hurried to rejoin his comrades again. He had joined that band, by the consent of his patriot father at the outbreaking of the war, though then but a stripling, and had acted with them in all those prominent events that has rendered them so famous in the annals of freedom.