But to-day that and all kindred thoughts were far from my mind as I pushed my way along the narrow track, now thrusting aside the scented plants that form in Carolina so large a part of the undergrowth, and now traversing the gloom of a pinewood where the feet sank without a sound in the rotting leaves. Even the heat and flies, even the scurry of a doe and fawn across my path were little heeded. My mind was in a tumult of wonder and conjecture. I thought only of Constantia, of her summons, of her possible need. I strove to imagine what had happened, what had, or could have, happened, to lead her to send for me; above all, I wondered what she could want with me at Hickory Knob, a place distant and solitary—she who had never offered me her company abroad, never gone farther with me than to that sliprail? Wondering, I sought the answer to these questions and sought it fruitlessly. I could find no answer that consorted with her character or was at one with her treatment of me. Had she met with an accident? She would not send for me. Had she fallen into hostile hands? I could do nothing, maimed and unarmed as I was. Was Marion with her? Then, why did he not come to the house? No conjecture that presented itself agreed with the facts, and I could only hasten my pace as much as my arm permitted, and look forward to seeing her. Where should I find her? At the foot of the rock? Or at the summit? Or would she perhaps be waiting for me at a certain flat stone on a level with the tree-tops, which formed a convenient seat, and which a carpet of nutshells and broken corncobs pointed out as a favorite resort of the negroes? I could not tell. The tangle of forest vines about me was not more blind or more confused than were my thoughts. I came at last, sweating at every pore, and fighting the swarms of flies that accompanied me to the foot of the little hill. She was not there; I could hear nothing. The stillness of afternoon lay heavy on the woods. Impatient of delay, I paused for a moment only, then I started to scale the hill and in less than a minute I stood beside the flat stone I have mentioned. She was not there, and I did not tarry, I climbed on, now slipping on the shale, and now clutching at branches of the myriad azaleas that earlier in the year clothed the bare hill with flame. At length I reached the summit which was no bigger than the floor of a barn. She was not there and I stood awhile, glad to take breath and to cool my heated face. I looked abroad over the silent trees, over the carpet of forest which autumn was beginning to dye to its pattern. I viewed for a moment the smooth green head of King’s Mountain, that to the westward rose above the trees. Then I turned to mark, in the direction whence I came, the cleft in the woods which marked the clearing about the Bluff. Beyond it the forest sank and was replaced by the more distant view of the mountains.