Health and her
inhabitants were returning to the city, and the guests of the
hospitable planters were thinning from the country. Business was
reviving and commotion was everywhere.
The young stranger was preparing to leave; yet he lingered. Ann had
gone; Alice grew more shy and timid, and his walks and rides were
solitary, and but that he loved nature in her autumn robes would have
been dull and uninteresting. The judge was absent at another plantation
beyond the river, and his books and his gun were his only companions.
Sometimes he read, sometimes he rode, and sometimes he walked to visit
Toney. It was on one of those peculiarly lonely afternoons which come
in the last days of October when the stillness persuades to rest and
meditation in the woods that, seated on a prostrate tree near the
pathway which led down the little creek to the residence of Uncle
Toney, the young guest of the judge was surprised by Alice with a small
negro girl on their way to visit Uncle Toney. Both started; but in a
moment were reassured, and slowly walked to the cabin of the good old
negro.
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