Weeks elapsed after the capture of Mr. McCalla, before she was able, with the most assiduous inquiries, to ascertain the place of his confinement. In the midst of her torturing anxiety and suspense her children fell sick of small-pox. She nursed them alone and unaided, and as soon as they were out of danger, resumed her search for her husband. Mounting her horse, she succeeded in forcing her way to the head-quarters of Lord Rawdon, at Camden, and obtained reluctant permission to visit her husband for ten minutes only in his wretched prison-pen. Though almost overcome by the interview, she hastened home, having altogether ridden through the wilderness one hundred miles in twenty four hours. She proceeded immediately to prepare clothing and provisions for her husband and the other prisoners. Her preparations having been completed, she set out on her return to Camden, in company with one of her neighbors, Mrs. Mary Nixon. Each of the brave women drove before her a pack-horse, laden with clothes and provisions for the prisoners. These errands of mercy were repeated every month, often in company with other women who were engaged in similar missions, and sometimes alone. Meanwhile she did not relax her efforts to effect the release of her husband. After many months she succeeded in procuring an order for the discharge of her husband with ten other prisoners, whose handcuffs and ankle chains were knocked off, and who left the prison in company with their heroic liberator. Examples are not wanting, in our Revolutionary annals, of a stern and lofty spirit of self-sacrifice in behalf of country, that will vie with that displayed by the first Brutus. We are told by the orator of the Society of the Cincinnati that when the British officers presented to Mrs. Rebecca Edwards the mandate which arrested her sons as "objects of retaliation," less sensitive of private affection than attached to her honor and the interest of her country, she stifled the tender feelings of the mother and heroically bade them despise the threats of their enemies, and steadfastly persist to support the glorious cause in which they had engaged--that if the threatened sacrifice should follow they would carry a parent's blessing, and the good opinion of every virtuous citizen with them, to the grave; but if from the frailty of human nature--of the possibility of which she would not suffer an idea to enter her mind--they were disposed to temporize and exchange this liberty for safety, they must forget her as a mother, nor subject her to the misery of ever beholding them again. As among the early Puritan settlers, so among the women of the Revolution, nothing was more remarkable than their belief in the efficacy of prayer.