Many was
the sufferer, in cattle, furniture, and person, that was created by this
rout; for the dispersion of a troop of Cowboys was only the extension
of an evil.
Such a scene could not be expected to be acted so near them, and the
inmates of the cottage take no interest in the result. In truth, the
feelings it excited pervaded every bosom, from the kitchen to the
parlor. Terror and horror had prevented the ladies from being
spectators, but they did not feel the less. Frances continued lying in
the posture we have mentioned, offering up fervent and incoherent
petitions for the safety of her countrymen, although in her inmost heart
she had personified her nation by the graceful image of Peyton
Dunwoodie. Her aunt and sister were less exclusive in their devotions;
but Sarah began to feel, as the horrors of war were thus brought home to
her senses, less pleasure in her anticipated triumphs.
The inmates of Mr. Wharton's kitchen were four, namely, Caesar and his
spouse, their granddaughter, a jet-black damsel of twenty, and the boy
before alluded to. The blacks were the remnants of a race of negroes
which had been entailed on his estate from Mr. Wharton's maternal
ancestors, who were descended from the early Dutch colonists. Time,
depravity, and death had reduced them to this small number; and the boy,
who was white, had been added by Miss Peyton to the establishment, as an
assistant, to perform the ordinary services of a footman.
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