At the close of the summer of 1778, the settlement on the Yadkin saw a company on pack horses approaching in the direction from the western wilderness.  They had often seen parties of emigrants departing in that direction, but it was a novel spectacle to see one return from that quarter.  At the head of that company was a blooming youth, scarcely yet arrived at the age of manhood.  It was the eldest surviving son of Daniel Boone.  Next behind him was a matronly woman, in weeds, and with a countenance of deep dejection.  It was Mrs. Boone.  Still behind was the daughter who had been a captive with the Indians.  The remaining children were too young to feel deeply.  The whole group was respectable in appearance, though clad in skins, and the primitive habiliments of the wilderness.  It might almost have been mistaken for a funeral procession.  It stopped at the house of Mr. Bryan, the father of Mrs. Boone.

The people of the settlement were not long in collecting to hear news from the west, and learn the fate of their former favorite, Boone, and his family.  As Mrs. Boone, in simple and backwood’s phrase, related the thrilling story of their adventures, which needed no trick of venal eloquence to convey it to the heart, an abundant tribute of tears from the hearers convinced the bereaved narrator that true sympathy is natural to the human heart.  As they shuddered at the dark character of many of the incidents related, it was an hour of triumph, notwithstanding their pity, for those wiser ones, who took care, in an under tone, to whisper that it might be remembered that they had predicted all that had happened.

CHAPTER XI.

A sketch of the character and adventures of several other pioneers—­Harrod, Kenton, Logan, Ray, McAffee, and others.

Colonel Boone having seen the formidable invasion of Boonesborough successfully repelled, and with such a loss as would not be likely to tempt the Indians to repeat such assaults—­and having thus disengaged his mind from public duties, resigned it to the influence of domestic sympathies.  The affectionate husband and father, concealing the tenderest heart under a sun-burnt and care-worn visage, was soon seen crossing the Alleghanies in pursuit of his wife and children.  The bright star of his morning promise had been long under eclipse; for this journey was one of continued difficulties, vexations, and dangers—­so like many of his sufferings already recounted, that we pass them by, fearing the effect of incidents of so much monotony upon the reader’s patience.  The frame and spirit of the western adventurer were of iron.  He surmounted all, and was once more in the bosom of his family on the Yadkin, who, in the language of the Bible, hailed him as one who had been dead and was alive again; who had been lost and was found.