he yet saw no reason to apprehend any danger.  If her manner and words had reference simply to the general lawlessness of the settlement, the precaution evidently conveyed no compliment to his own capacities for observation.  Whatever might have been her motive, the youth felt its kindness; and she rose not a little in his esteem, when he reflected with how much dignity and ladylike propriety she had given, to a comparative stranger, the counsel which she evidently thought necessary to his well-being.  With a free rein he soon overtook Forrester, and with him took his place in the rear of the now rapidly advancing cavalcade.

As Forrester had conjectured, the command of the party, such as it was, was assigned to the landlord.  There might have been something like forty or fifty men in all, the better portion of them mounted and well armed—­some few on foot struggling to keep pace with the riders—­all in high spirits, and indignant at the invasion of what they considered their own.  These, however, were not all hunters of the precious metal, and many of them, indeed, as the reader has by this time readily conjectured, carried on a business of very mixed complexion.  The whole village—­blacksmith, grocer, baker, and clothier included, turned out en masse, upon the occasion; for, with an indisputable position in political economy, deriving their gains directly or indirectly from this pursuit, the cause was, in fact, a cause in common.

The scene of operations, in view of which they had now come, had to the eye all the appearance of a moderate encampment.  The intruding force had done the business completely.  They had made a full transfer, from their old to their new quarters, of bag and baggage; and had possessed themselves of all the log-houses in and about the disputed region.  Their fires were in full heat, to use the frontier phrase, and the water was hissing in their kettles, and the dry thorns crackling under the pot.  Never had usurpers made themselves more perfectly at home; and the rage of the old incumbents was, of course, duly heightened at a prospect of so much ease and felicity enjoyed at their expense.

The enemy were about equal in point of number with those whom they had so rudely dispossessed.  They had, however, in addition to their disposable force, their entire assemblage of wives, children, slaves, and dependants, cattle and horses, enough, as Forrester bitterly remarked, “to breed a famine in the land.”  They had evidently settled themselves for life, and the ousted party, conscious of the fact, prepared for the dernier resort.  Everything on the part of the usurpers indicated a perfect state of preparedness for an issue which they never doubted would be made; and all the useless baggage, interspersed freely with rocks and fallen trees, had been well-employed in increasing the strength of a position for which, such an object considered, nature had already done much.  The defences, as they now stood, precluded all chance of success from an attack by mounted men, unless the force so employed were overwhelming.  The defenders stood ready at their posts, partly under cover, and so arrayed as easily to put themselves so, and were armed in very nearly the same manner with the assailing party.  In this guise of formidable defence, they waited patiently the onset.