The chronicles of the Carolinas are full of romance. Here, at Cross Creek, dwelt Flora MacDonald, the heroic rescuer of the Pretender after the disasters of Culloden. It seems a strange chance that brought her from such exciting masquerades, from the companionship of kings and the rôle of heroine on the stage of the great world, to the pioneer's cottage in the wild woods of the Western wilderness. The only drawback to her career in eighteenth century eyes was that she married and lived happy ever after. The romance of that day demanded a broken heart, and tragedy was always in high favor. Every locality had its story of blighted love and life. The Dismal Swamp, lying on the border between Virginia and Maryland, was a sort of Gretna Green, where many runaway marriages were celebrated. Tradition tells of a lover whose sweetheart died suddenly; and he, driven mad by grief, fancied that she had gone to the Dismal Swamp, where he perished in the search for her. When Tom Moore was in this country he was impressed by the legend, and set it thus to the music--let us not dare to say the jingle--of his verse: They made her a grave too cold and damp For a soul so warm and true, And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp, Where all night long, by her fire-fly lamp She paddles her white canoe. And her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see, Her paddle I soon shall hear. Long and loving our life shall be, And I'll hide the maid in a cypress tree, When the footsteps of Death draw near. Real life had its tragedies, too. In the deep wainscoted hall of the Brandon Mansion hangs a portrait of lovely Evelyn Byrd. She sits on a green bank, with a handful of roses and a shepherd's crook in her lap--her soft, dark eyes look out in pensive sadness as though they could, if they would, tell the story of a maiden's heart and a life ended untimely by unhappy love. One story says she broke her heart for Parke Custis, who left her to wear the willow, and married afterward the Martha Dandridge, who in the whirligig of time became Lady Washington. Another rumor connects her name with that of the Earl of Peterborough, who loved her deeply, so the story runs; but his creed was not hers, and her father, Colonel Byrd, would not consent to the marriage. The maiden yielded to her father's will, but pined away and died; and there, in the Westover burying-ground, she lies under a ponderous stone, which records this epitaph: "Alas, Reader, We can detain nothing, however valued, From unrelenting death, Beauty, Fortune, or exalted Honour-- See here a proof!" [Illustration: "Brandon," James River, Va.]