It was at the close of a cloudy afternoon, late in October, 1780, when Mat Dunbar, with a small command of eighteen mounted men, approached the well-known farmstead of Frederick Sabb. The road lay along the west bank of the eastern branch of the Edisto, inclining to or receding from the river, in correspondence with the width of the swamp, or the sinuosities of the stream. The farm of Sabb was bounded on one side by the river, and his cottage stood within a mile of it. Between, however, the lands were entirely uncleared. The woods offered a physical barrier to the malaria of the swamp; while the ground, though rich, was liable to freshet, and required a degree of labor in the drainages which it was not in the power of our good Dutchman to bestow. A single wagon-track led through the wood to the river from his house; and there may have been some half dozen irregular foot-paths tending in the same direction. When within half a mile from the house, Mat Dunbar pricked up his ears. “That was surely the gallop of a horse,” he said to his lieutenant—a coarse, ruffianly fellow like himself, named Clymes. “Where away?” demanded the other. “To the left. Put in with a few of the boys, and see what can be found.” Clymes did as he was bidden; but the moment he had disappeared, Dunbar suddenly wheeled into the forest also, putting spurs to his horse, and commanding his men to follow and scatter themselves in the wood. A keen suspicion was at the bottom of his sudden impulse; and with his pistol in his grasp, and his teeth set firmly, he darted away at a rate that showed the eagerness of the blood-hound, on a warm scent. In a few moments the wood was covered with his people, and their cries and halloes answering to each other, turned the whole solitude into a scene of the most animated life. Accustomed to _drive_ the woods for deer, his party pursued the same habit in their present quest, enclosing the largest extent of territory, and gradually contracting their _cordon_ at a given point. It was not long before a certain degree of success seemed to justify their pursuit. A loud shout from Clymes, his lieutenant, drew the impetuous Dunbar to the place, and there he found the trooper, with two others of the party, firmly confronted by no less a person than Frederica Sabb. The maiden was very pale, but her lips were closely compressed together, and her eyes lightened with an expression which was not so much indicative of anger as of courage and resolve. As Dunbar rode up, she addressed him. “You are bravely employed, Captain Dunbar, in hunting with your soldiers a feeble woman.” “In faith, my dear Miss Sabb, we looked for very different game,” replied the leader, while a something sardonic played over his visage. “But perhaps you can put us in the way of finding it. You are surely not here alone?” “And why not? You are within hail of my father’s dwelling.” “But yours, surely, are not the tastes for lonely walks.”