the utter hopelessness, indeed, of a second encounter with the same persons.  He felt sure that he would be suffered no such long parley as before.  Without restraining his horse, our young traveller simply regulated his speed by a due estimate of the capacity of the outlaws for pursuit a-foot; and, without knowing whither he sped, having left the route wholly to the horse, he was suddenly relieved by finding himself upon a tolerably broad road, which, in the imperfect twilight, he concluded to be the same from which, in his mistimed musings he had suffered his horse to turn aside.  He had no means to ascertain the fact, conclusively, and, in sooth, no time; for now he began to feel a strange sensation of weakness; his eyes swam, and grew darkened; a numbness paralyzed his whole frame; a sickness seized upon his heart; and, after sundry feeble efforts, under a strong will, to command and compel his powers, they finally gave way, and he sunk from his steed upon the long grass, and lay unconscious;—­his last thought, ere his senses left him, being that of death!  Here let us leave him for a little space, while we hurriedly seek better knowledge of him in other quarters.

CHAPTER III.

Young love—­the retrospect.

It will not hurt our young traveller, to leave him on the greensward, in the genial spring-time; and, as the night gathers over him, and a helpful insensibility interposes for the relief of pain, we may avail ourselves of the respite to look into the family chronicles, and show the why and wherefore of this errant journey, the antecedents and the relations of our hero.

Ralph Colleton, the young traveller whose person we have described, and whose most startling adventure in life, we have just witnessed, was the only son of a Carolinian, who could boast the best blood of English nobility in his veins.  The sire, however, had outlived his fortunes, and, late in life, had been compelled to abandon the place of his nativity—­an adventurer, struggling against a proud stomach, and a thousand embarrassments—­and to bury himself in the less known, but more secure and economical regions of Tennessee.  Born to affluence, with wealth that seemed adequate to all reasonable desires—­a noble plantation, numerous slaves, and the host of friends who necessarily come with such a condition, his individual improvidence, thoughtless extravagance, and lavish mode of life—­a habit not uncommon in the South—­had rendered it necessary, at the age of fifty, when the mind, not less than the body, requires repose rather than adventure, that he should emigrate from the place of his birth; and with resources diminished to a cipher, endeavor to break ground once more in unknown forests, and commence the toils and troubles of life anew.  With an only son (the youth before us) then a mere boy, and no other family, Colonel Ralph Colleton did not hesitate at