Next day on the Rappahannock we found Shalah, who had gone on to warn the two men I proposed to enlist.  One of them, Donaldson, was a big, slow-spoken, middle-aged farmer, the same who had been with Bacon in the fight at Occaneechee Island.  He just cried to his wife to expect him back when she saw him, slung on his back an old musket, cast a long leg over his little horse, and was ready to follow.  The other, the Frenchman Bertrand, was a quiet, slim gentleman, who was some kin to the murdered D’Aubignys.  I had long had my eye on him, for he was very wise in woodcraft, and had learned campaigning under old Turenne.  He kissed his two children again and again, and his wife clung to his arms.  There were tears in the honest fellow’s eyes as he left, and I thought all the more of him, for he is the bravest man who has most to risk.  I mind that Ringan consoled the lady in the French tongue, which I did not comprehend, and would not be hindered from getting out his saddle-bags and comforting the children with candied plums.  He had near as grave a face as Bertrand when we rode off, and was always looking back to the homestead.  He spoke long to the Frenchman in his own speech, and the sad face of the latter began to lighten.

I asked him what he said.

“Just that he was the happy man to have kind hearts to weep for him.  A fine thing for a landless, childless fellow like me to say!  But it’s gospel truth, Andrew.  I told him that his bairns would be great folks some day, and that their proudest boast would be that their father had ridden on this errand.  Oh, and all the rest of the easy consolations.  If it had been me, I would not have been muckle cheered.  It’s well I never married, for I would not have had the courage to leave my fireside.”

We were now getting into a new and far lovelier country.  The heavy forests and swamps which line the James and the York had gone, and instead we had rolling spaces of green meadowland, and little hills which stood out like sentinels of the great blue chain of mountains that hung in the west.  Instead of the rich summer scents of the Tidewater, we had the clean, sharp smell of uplands, and cool winds relieved the noontide heat.  By and by we struck the Rapidan, a water more like our Scots rivers, flowing in pools and currents, very different from the stagnant reaches of the Pamunkey.  We were joined for a little bit by two men from Stafford county, who showed us the paths that horses could travel.

It was late in the afternoon that we reached a broad meadow hemmed in by noble cedars.  I knew without telling that we were come to the scene of the tragedy, and with one accord we fell silent.  The place had been well looked after, for a road had been made through the woods, and had been carried over marshy places on a platform of cedar piles.  Presently we came to a log fence with a gate, which hung idly open.  Within was a paddock, and beyond another fence, and beyond that a great pile of blackened timber.  The place was so smiling and homelike under the westering sun that one looked to see a trim steading with the smoke of hearth fires ascending, and to hear the cheerful sounds of labour and of children’s voices.  Instead there was this grim, charred heap, with the light winds swirling the ashes.