forward at the words "trot,
march!" and adjusted his muscles instantaneously to the acceleration
implied in "gallop!" and came to an abrupt and immovable pause at
"halt!"--all with no more regard to her grasp on the reins than if she
had been a fly on the saddle. As they went the wind beset her with cool,
damp buffets on chin and cheek; the overhanging budding boughs, all
unseen, drenched her with perfumed dew as she was whisked through their
midst; the pace was adopted rather with reference to military custom and
the expectation of the waiting commandant than her convenience; at every
sudden whirl responsive to the word of command she was in momentary fear
of being flung beneath the swiftly trampling hoofs of the horses on
either side of her, and despite her recoil from the bigness and
bluffness and presumable bloody-mindedness of the two troopers beside
her she was sensible of their sympathy as they took heed of the
instability with which she bounced about, perched up side-wise on a
military saddle. Indeed, one was moved to ask her if she would not
prefer to be strapped on with a girth, and to offer his belt for the
purpose; and the other took the opportunity to gird at the forgetfulness
of the cow-drivers to furnish her with her own pillion.

Nevertheless she dreaded the journey's end; and as they came out of the
forests on the banks of the Keowee River, and beheld the vague glimmers
of the gray day slowly dawning, albeit night was yet in the woods, and
the outline of the military works of Fort Prince George taking symmetry
and wonted proportions against the dappled eastern sky, all of blended
roseate tints and thin nebulous grays, her heart so sank, she felt so
tremulously guilty that had all the sixteen guns from the four bastions
opened fire upon her at once she would not have been surprised.

No such welcome, however, did the party encounter. The officer
commanding it stopped the ambassador and the linguister and let the
soldiers go on at a round trot toward the great gate, which stood open,
the bayonet on the musket of the sentry shining with an errant gleam of
light like the sword of fire at the entrance of Paradise. For now the
sun was up, the radiance suffusing the blue and misty mountains and the
seas of fog in the valleys. Albeit its dazzling focus was hardly visible
above the eastern heights, it sent a red glow all along the parapet of
the covered way and the slope beyond to the river bank, where only two