Slowly the scene
cleared, and I recognized Grey's features, drawn and constrained, and
yet welcoming. Bertrand was weeping after his excitable fashion.
But there was a face nearer to me, and with that face in my memory I
went off into pleasant dreams. Somewhere in them mingled the words of
the old spaewife, that I should miss love and fortune in the sunshine
and find them in the rain.
The strength of youth is like a branch of yew, for if it is bent it
soon straightens. By the third day I was on my feet again, with only
the stiffness of healing wounds to remind me of those desperate
passages. When I could look about me I found that men had arrived from
the Rappahannock, and among them Elspeth's uncle, who had girded on a
great claymore, and looked, for all his worn face and sober habit, a
mighty man of war. With them came news of the rout of the Cherokees,
who had been beaten by Nicholson's militia in Stafford county and
driven down the long line of the Border, paying toll to every stockade.
Midway Lawrence had fallen upon them and driven the remnants into the
hills above the head waters of the James. It would be many a day, I
thought, before these gentry would bring war again to the Tidewater.
The Rappahannock men were in high feather, convinced that they had
borne the brunt of the invasion.
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