dred brave young partisan leaders, starting suddenly up, with their little squads, on every side throughout the country, prepared to take terrible vengeance for the thousand wantonly inflicted sufferings which their friends and families had been made to bear at the hands of their enemies.
Leaving his companion, Humphries, comfortably cared for in the hall, along with Miss Barbara Walton, the maiden sister of the colonel, Major Singleton proceeded at once to the apartment where his uncle continued to chafe in his many bewilderments of situation. He found him pacing hurriedly along the room, his strides duly increasing in length with the increasing confusion of his thoughts. These occasionally found their way to his lips in soliloquizing speech, and now and then took on them a shape of passionate denunciation. Too much absorbed for the time to notice the appearance of his nephew, he continued to mutter over his discontents, and in this way conveyed to the major a knowledge of his precise feelings. The latter stood quietly at the entrance, for a few moments, surveying his uncle (himself unseen), and listening to the angry ejaculations, with which, from time to time, he broke the silence, to give expression to his words. He listened with real pleasure. Familiar as he was with his uncle's character, Major Singleton had properly estimated the effect upon him of Clinton's proclamation, and he now came forward seasonably to his assistance. The colonel turned as he drew nigh, and, for a moment, the pleasurable emotion with which he met the son of his sister, and one who had long been a very great favourite with himself, drove away many of the troublesome thoughts which had been busy with his mind.
"Ah, Robert!—my dear boy! when did you arrive, and how?"
"On horseback, sir. I reached Dorchester yesterday."
"Indeed? so long—and only now a visitor of 'The Oaks?' You surely mean to lodge with us, Robert?"
"Thank you, uncle; but that I dare not do. I should not feel myself altogether safe here."
"Not safe in my house! What mean you, nephew? Whence the danger—what have you to fear?"
"Nothing to fear, if I avoid the danger. You forget, sir, that I have not the security of British favour—I have not the talisman of
