It was a queerly assorted embassy that rode out of the gates of the stockade, the ambassador and his linguister.  Richard Mivane was mounted upon a strong, sprightly horse, with Peninnah Penelope Anne behind him upon a pillion.  Following them at a little distance came his body-servant, Caesar, more fitted by temperament than either to enjoy the change, the spirit of adventure, and reveling in a sense of importance which was scarcely diminished by the fact that it was vicarious.  He rode a sturdy nag and had charge of a led horse, that bore a pack-saddle with a store of changes of raiment, of edible provisions, and tents to fend off the chances of inclement weather.  They were to travel under the protection of a trader’s pack-train, from a reestablished trading-house in the Overhill Towns of the Cherokees on the Tennessee River; and so accurately did they time their departure and the stages of their journey that they met this caravan just at the hour and place designated, and risked naught from the unsettled state of the country or an encounter with some ignorant or inimical savage, prone to wreak upon inoffensive units vengeance for wrongs, real or fancied, wrought by a nation.

The trader, being a man habituated by frequent sojourns in Charlestown to metropolitan customs and a worldly trend of thought, instantly recognized the quality of Mivane and his granddaughter, despite the old red hood and blue serge riding-coat and their residence here so far from all the graces that appertain to civilization; though, to be sure, Richard Mivane, in his trim “Joseph,” his head cowled in an appropriate “trotcozy,” and his jaunty self-possession quite restored by the cutting of the Gordian knot of his dilemma, demonstrating his capacity to duly perform all his undertakings, bore himself in a manner calculated to enhance even the high estimation of his fellow-traveler.  After the custom of a gentleman, however, he was most augustly free from unwarrantable self-assertion, but he could not have failed to be flattered by the phrase of the trader, could he have heard it, in delivering over his charge to the herders on the Keowee River.  “Gadzooks, neighbors, but I shouldn’t be a whit surprised if that old party is a duke in disguise!”

But the cow-drivers heard him not!  They hardly heeded the coming and the going of the pack-train and their gossips the packmen!  They cared naught for the news the caravan brought of the country-side far above, nor the commissions they were wont to give for the various settlements and the metropolis far below!  For so featly came riding in to the humble prosaic precincts of the cow-pens and into their hearts the vernal beauty of Spring herself, the living Bloom of charm and love, all arrayed in delicate gray sergedusoy opening upon carnation taffeta, and crowned with sheer quillings of primrose sarcenet, with a cheek that repeated these roseate tints and a glint of golden brown tresses curling softly against a nape of pearl, that the ranchmen