On the couch thus circumstanced lay an elderly lady, seemingly in the very last stages of disease.  She seemed only at intervals conscious of the fire.  At her side, in a situation almost as helpless as her own, was the young female whose screams had first awakened the attention of the traveller.  She lay moaning beside the couch, shrieking at intervals, and though in momentary danger from the flames, which continued to increase, taking no steps for their arrest.  Her only efforts were taken to raise the old woman from the couch, and to this, the strength of the young one was wholly unequal.  Ralph went manfully to work, and had the satisfaction of finding success in his efforts.  With a fearless hand he tore down the burning drapery which curtained the windows and couch; and which, made of light cotton stuffs, presented a ready auxiliar to the progress of the destructive element.  Striking down the burning shutter with a single blow, he admitted the fresh air, without which suffocation must soon have followed, and throwing from the apartment such of the furniture as had been seized upon by the flames, he succeeded in arresting their farther advance.

All this was the work of a few moments.  There had been no word of intercourse between the parties, and the youth now surveyed them with looks of curious inquiry, for the first time.  The invalid, as we have said, was apparently struggling with the last stages of natural decay.  Her companion was evidently youthful, in spite of those marks which even the unstudied eye might have discerned in her features, of a temper and a spirit subdued and put to rest by the world’s strife and trial, and by afflictions which are not often found to crowd and to make up the history and being of the young.  Their position was peculiarly insulated, and Ralph wondered much at the singularity of a scene to which his own experience could furnish no parallel.  Here were two lone women—­living on the borders of a savage nation, and forming the frontier of a class of whites little less savage, without any protection, and, to his mind, without any motive for making such their abiding-place.  His wonder might possibly have taken the shape of inquiry, but that there was something of oppressive reserve and shrinking timidity in the air of the young woman, who alone could have replied to his inquiries.  At this time an old female negro entered, now for the first time alarmed by the outcry, who assisted in removing such traces of the fire as still remained about the room.  She seemed to occupy a neighboring outhouse; to which, having done what seemed absolutely necessary, she immediately retired.

Colleton, with a sentiment of the deepest commiseration, proceeded to reinstate things as they might have been before the conflagration, and having done so, and having soothed, as far as he well might, the excited apprehensions of the young girl, who made her acknowledgments in a not unbecoming style, he ventured to ask a few questions as to the condition of the old lady and of herself; but, finding from the answers that the subject was not an agreeable one, and having no pretence for further delay, he prepared to depart.  He inquired, however, his proper route to the Chestatee river, and thus obtained a solution of the difficulty which beset him in the choice of roads at the fork.