“Yes, if you please,” answered the maiden, so amazed by the conversation that she welcomed the change for reflection. Was Captain Hazy the British commander of the foraging party who had come to the plantation, she wondered. It occurred to her that it might be wise to accept her hostess’s advice to keep a still tongue. There was but one bed in the room, and this was given Peggy, while the mother and son simply lay down upon the floor before the fire, which was the custom among mountaineers. Without disrobing the girl lay down, but not to sleep. She was uneasy, and the more she reflected upon her position the more it came to her that she had been rash to start out alone as she had done. “But I won’t turn back now,” she decided. “I will take some of the money which Friend Henry gave me, and hire some one to take me home. ’Tis what I should have done at first.” At the first sign of dawn she was astir. The woman rose at the same time, and prepared her a hot breakfast. “Now you just go right down that way,” she told Peggy, as the maiden mounted her pony, indicating the direction as she spoke. “That’ll take you down to the Cross Creek road. Ford the river at Cross Creek, and you will be right on the lower road to Virginia.” Peggy thanked her, gave her a half guinea, and departed. Could she have followed the direction given she would, as the woman said, have been on the lower road to Virginia, but alas, such general directions took no account of numerous crossroads and forkings, and the maiden was soon in a maze. That night she found a resting-place at a farmhouse where the accommodations were of a better nature, but when she tried to hire a man for guidance not one seemed willing to go. “They were needed at home,” they said. “There were so many raiding parties that men could not be spared.” Which was true, but disheartening to Peggy. In this manner three days went by. At long distances apart were houses of some description, and many ruins, some of them smoldering. On the afternoon of the third day Peggy was riding along slowly, thoroughly discouraged, when all at once from the dense woods that lined the roadway there emerged the form of a horseman. He was hatless and disheveled in appearance, and he surveyed the road as though fearful of meeting a foe. As his glance fell upon the maiden he uttered an ejaculation, and dashed toward her. “Peggy,” he cried staring at her in amaze, “what in the world are you doing down here in South Carolina? I thought you in Virginia by this time.” “I would not be surprised if thee told me that I was in Africa,” answered poor Peggy half laughing, half crying. “I started for Virginia, but took a wrong turning, and seem to have kept on taking them ever since. I don’t want to be down here, but no one will come with me to guide me, and I always go wrong on the crossroads.” In spite of the gravity of the situation Drayton, for it was he, laughed.