XXVIII The Maid of Fincastle
In the autumn days as the century was closing, William Clark set out for Virginia, as his brother had done in other years. Kentucky was filled with old forts, neglected bastions, moats, and blockhouses, their origin forgotten. Already the builders had passed on westward.
The Boone trace was lined now with settlements, a beaten bridle-path thronged with emigrant trains kicking up the dust. Through the frowning portals of Cumberland Gap, Captain Clark and his man York galloped into Virginia.
From the southern border of Virginia to the Potomac passes the old highway, between the Alleghanies and the Blue Ridge. Cantering thoughtfully along under the broad-leaved locusts and laurels, a melody like the laugh of wood-nymphs rippled from the forest.
“Why don’t he go?” cried a musical feminine voice. “Oh, Harriet, Harriet!” With more laughter came a rustling of green leaves. Parting the forest curtain to discover the source of this unusual commotion, Captain Clark descried two girls seated on a small pony, switching with all their slender energy.
“His feet are set. He will not move, Judy.”
Leaping at once from his saddle, the Captain bowed low to the maidens in distress. “Can I be of any assistance?”
The sudden apparition of a handsome soldier in tri-cornered hat and long silk hose quite took their breath away.
“Thank you, sir knight,” answered the blonde with a flush of bewitching colour. “Firefly, my pony, seems to object to carrying two, but we cannot walk across that ford. My cousin and I have on our satin slippers.”
The Captain laughed, and taking the horse’s bridle easily led them beyond the mountain rill that dashed across their pathway.
“And will you not come to my father’s house?” inquired the maiden. “It is here among the trees.”
Clark looked,—the roof and gables of a comfortable Virginian mansion shone amid the greenery. “I fear not. I must reach Colonel Hancock’s to-night.”
“This is Colonel Hancock’s,” the girls replied with a smothered laugh.
At a signal, York lifted the five-barred gate and all passed in to the long green avenue.
“The brother of my old friend, General George Rogers Clark!” exclaimed Colonel Hancock. “Glad to see you, glad to see you. Many a time has he stopped on this road.”
The Hancocks were among the founders of Virginia. With John Smith the first one came over “in search of Forrest for his building of Ships,” and was “massacred by ye salvages at Thorp’s House, Berkeley Hundred.”
General Hancock, the father of the present Colonel, equipped a regiment for his son at the breaking out of the Revolution. On Pulaski’s staff, the young Colonel received the body of the illustrious Pole as he fell at the siege of Savannah.
From his Sea Island plantations and the sound of war in South Carolina, General Hancock, old and in gout, set out for Virginia. But Pulaski had fallen and his son was a prisoner under Cornwallis. Attended only by his daughter Mary and a faithful slave, the General died on the way and was buried by Uncle Primus on the top of King’s Mountain some weeks before the famous battle.
Released on parole and finding his fortune depleted, Colonel George Hancock read Blackstone and the Virginia laws, took out a license, married, and settled at Fincastle. Here his children were born, of whom Judy was the youngest daughter. Later, by the death of that heroic sister Mary, a niece had come into the family, Harriet Kennerly. These were the girls that Captain Clark had encountered in his morning ride among the mountains of Fincastle.
“Your brother, the General, and I journeyed together to Philadelphia, when he was Commissioner of Indian affairs. Is he well and enjoying the fruits of his valour?” continued the Colonel.
“My brother is disabled, the result of exposure in his campaigns. He will never recover. I am now visiting Virginia in behalf of his accounts with the Assembly,—they have never been adjusted. He even thought you, his old friend, might be able to lend assistance, either in Virginia or in Congress.”
“I am honoured by the request. You may depend upon me.”
Colonel George Hancock had been a member of the Fourth Congress in Washington’s administration, and with a four-horse family coach travelled to and from Philadelphia attending the sessions.
Here the little Judy’s earliest recollections had been of the beautiful Dolly Todd who was about to wed Mr. Madison. Jefferson was Secretary of State then, and his daughters, Maria and Martha, came often to visit Judy’s older sisters, Mary and Caroline.
Judy’s hair was a fluff of gold then; shading to brown, it was a fluff of gold still, that Granny Molly found hard to keep within bounds. Harriet, her cousin, of dark and splendid beauty, a year or two older, was ever the inseparable companion of Judy Hancock.
“Just fixing up the place again,” explained Colonel Hancock. “It has suffered from my absence at Philadelphia. A tedious journey, a tedious journey from Fincastle.”
But to the children that journey had been a liberal education. The long bell-trains of packhorses, the rumbling Conestogas, the bateaux and barges, the great rivers and dense forests, the lofty mountains and wide farmlands, the towns and villages, Philadelphia itself, were indelibly fixed in their memory and their fancy.
Several times in the course of the next few years, William Clark had occasion to visit Virginia in behalf of his brother, and each time more and more he noted the budding graces of the maids of Fincastle.