"One word of Virginia, your fair friend, and I am gone. Will she survive? Is her reason unsettled? Does she believe the strange story of the Recluse?" "In a word then, she is better--of sound mind, and in her heart does not believe one word of that story, though sober reason is strangely perplexed." "One word more, and I have done. Does she inquire for me?" "The very first word she said to me was, 'Does Nathaniel believe it?' Now go, while yet you may. Should any new emergency arise in your absence I will despatch a courier after you." "Yet one message to Virginia. Tell her that I have accidentally discovered in the trinket preserved by her father, and worn by me in the days of my infancy, the likeness of her whom I have every reason to believe my mother. Tell her not to hope too sanguinely, but to give that circumstance its weight, and trust to the developments of time; and now I commit you both, my dearest friends, to the protection of an overruling Providence; farewell." With these parting words he rushed down stairs, mounted his fleet charger, and swiftly left the court just as the Governor's emissaries entered the front porch of the house to arrest him. Harriet drew her veil closely over her face, and almost as fleetly sought her father's dwelling. Our hero in a very few minutes placed the river which separates the island from the main land between him and his pursuers. The sun was yet above the western horizon, and the clouds which spread in fleecy and stationary masses, were tinted with the softest hues of the violet and the rose, filling the mind with pleasing images of repose, cheerfulness, and hope. These soothing and delightful influences of the summer evening were in a great measure lost however upon our hero as he pursued his solitary way through the unbroken forest in the immediate footsteps of the army. Besides the inevitable suspense attending the developments of his own origin and destiny--there were immediate anticipations before him of no pleasing character. He had just assumed the responsibilities of an office, which at the very outset was attended with the most painful embarrassments. His keen military eye ran over the ground occupied by the enemies of his country, and perceived at once that to make his enterprise completely and permanently successful, the savages must be driven entirely from the peninsula.