s rifle in his
arms; and when half a dozen men stood together, in conversation, they
turned their backs to each other, all facing different ways, to watch
for a lurking savage.

So the Donelsons lived for eight years, and gathered about them more
negroes, more cattle, and more horses than any other household in the
settlement. During one of the long Winters, when a great tide of
emigration had reduced the stock of corn, and threatened the
neighborhood with famine, Colonel Donelson moved to Kentucky with all
his family and dependents, and there lived until the corn crop at
Nashville was gathered. Rachel, by this time, had grown to be a
beautiful and vigorous young lady, well skilled in all the arts of the
backwoods, and a remarkably bold and graceful rider. She was a plump
little damsel, with the blackest hair and eyes, and of a very cheerful
and friendly disposition. During the temporary residence of her father
in Kentucky, she gave her hand and heart to one Lewis Robards, and her
father returned to Nashville without her.

Colonel Donelson soon after, while in the woods surveying far from his
home, fell by the hand of an assassin. He was found pierced by bullets;
but whether they were fired by red savages or by white was never known.
To comfort her mother in her loneliness, Rachel and her husband came to
Nashville and lived with her, intending, as soon as the Indians were
subdued, to occupy a farm of their own.

In the year 1788 Andrew Jackson, a young lawyer from North Carolina,
arrived at Nashville to enter upon the practice of his profession, and
went to board with Mrs. Donelson. He soon discovered that Mrs. Rachel
Robards lived most unhappily with her husband, who was a man of violent
temper and most jealous disposition. Young Jackson had not long resided
in the family before Mr. Robards began to be jealous of him, and many
violent scenes took place between them. The jealous Robards at length
abandoned his wife and went off to his old home in Kentucky, leaving
Jackson master of the field.

A rumor soon after reached the place that Robards Had procured a divorce
from his wife in the Legislature of Virginia; soon after which Andrew
Jackson and Rachel Donelson were married. The rumor proved to be false,
and they lived together for two years before a divorce was really
granted, at the end of which time they were married again. This
marriage, though so inauspiciously begun, was an eminently happy one,
although, out