To all this Mrs. Boone could only object, that Kentucky had indeed been to her, as its name imported, a dark and _Bloody Ground_. She had lost her eldest son by the savage fire before they had reached the country. Her daughter had been made a captive, and had experienced a forbearance from the Indians to her inexplicable. She would have been carried away to the savage towns, and there would have been forcibly married to some warrior, but for the perilous attempt, and improbable success of her father in recapturing her. Now the father himself, her affectionate husband, and the heroic defender of the family, had fallen a sacrifice, probably in the endurance of tortures on which the imagination dared not to dwell. Under the influence of griefs like these, next to the unfailing resource of religion, the heart naturally turns to the sympathy and society of those bound to it by the ties of nature and affinity. They returned to their friends in North Carolina. It was nearly five years since this now desolate family had started in company with the first emigrating party of families, in high hopes and spirits, for Kentucky. We have narrated their disastrous rencounter with the Indians in Powell's valley, and their desponding return to Clinch river. We have seen their subsequent return to Boonesborough, on Kentucky river. Tidings of the party thus far had reached the relatives of Mrs. Boone's family in North Carolina; but no news from the country west of the Alleghanies had subsequently reached them. All was uncertain conjecture, whether they still lived, or had perished by famine, wild beasts, or the Indians. At the close of the summer of 1778, the settlement on the Yadkin saw a company on pack horses approaching in the direction from the western wilderness. They had often seen parties of emigrants departing in that direction, but it was a novel spectacle to see one return from that quarter. At the head of that company was a blooming youth, scarcely yet arrived at the age of manhood. It was the eldest surviving son of Daniel Boone. Next behind him was a matronly woman, in weeds, and with a countenance of deep dejection. It was Mrs. Boone. Still behind was the daughter who had been a captive with the Indians. The remaining children were too young to feel deeply. The whole group was respectable in appearance, though clad in skins, and the primitive habiliments of the wilderness. It might almost have been mistaken for a funeral procession. It stopped at the house of Mr. Bryan, the father of Mrs. Boone.