Though not active among the loyalists, he was now known to approve of their sentiments; and while giving them all the aid and comfort in his power, without actually showing himself in armor, he as steadily turned a cold and unwilling front to the patriots, and all those who went against the monarch. The visits of Richard Coulter to Frederica were all stolen ones, perhaps not the less sweet for being so. A storm sometimes brought him forth at nightfall from the shelter of the neighboring swamp, venturing abroad at a time when loyalty was supposed to keep its shelter. But these visits were always accompanied by considerable peril. The eye of Matthew Dunbar was frequently drawn in the direction of the fugitive, while his passions were always eager in the desire which led him to seek for this particular victim. The contest was a well-known issue of life and death. The fugitive patriot was predoomed always to the halter, by those who desired to pacify old revenges, or acquire new estates. Dunbar did not actually know that Coulter and Frederica Sabb were in the habit of meeting; but that they had met, he knew, and he had sworn their detection. He had become a declared suitor of that maiden, and the fears of old Sabb would not suffer him to decline his attentions to his daughter, or to declare against them. Dunbar had become notoriously an unmitigated ruffian. His insolence disgusted the old Dutchman, who, nevertheless, feared his violence and influence. Still, sustained by good old Minnicker Sabb, his _vrow_, the father had the firmness to tell Dunbar freely, that his daughter’s affections should remain unforced; while the daughter herself, seeing the strait of her parents, was equally careful to avoid the final necessity of repulsing her repulsive suitor. She continued, by a happy assertion of maidenly dignity, to keep him at bay, without vexing his self-esteem; and to receive him with civility, without affording him positive encouragement. Such was the condition of things among our several parties, when the partisan war began; when the favorite native leaders in the South—the first panic of their people having passed—had rallied their little squads, in swamp and thicket, and were making those first demonstrations which began to disquiet the British authorities, rendering them doubtful of the conquests which they had so lately deemed secure. This, be it remembered, was after the defeat of Gates at Camden, when there was no sign of a Continental army within the State.