The Missing Bride. Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

village of his wife, the heroic Marie Zelenski, the companion of all his campaigns and voyages, and the first lady of his manor; thirdly, that the grateful and happy soldier had only meant to express his perfect satisfaction with his fortune, and to say:

      "Yes, this is luck enough! luck enough to repay me for all the past!"

       Be it as it may, from time immemorial the place has been "Luckenough."

      The owner in 1814 was Commodore Nickolas Waugh, who inherited the property in right of his mother, the only child and heiress of Peter Kalouga.

      This man had the constitution and character, not of his mother's, but of his father's family—a hardy, rigorous, energetic Montgomery race, full of fire, spirit and enterprise. At the age of twelve Nickolas lost his father.

      At fifteen he began to weary of the tedium of Luckenough, varied only by the restraint of the academy during term. And at sixteen he rebelled against the rule of his indolent lymphatic mamma, broke through the reins of domestic government, escaped to Baltimore and shipped as cabin boy in a merchantman.

      Nickolas Waugh went through many adventures, served on board merchantmen, privateers and haply pirates, too, sailed to every part of the known world, and led a wild, reckless and sinful life, until the breaking out of the Revolutionary War, when he took service with Paul Jones, the American Sea King, and turned the brighter part of his character up to the light. He performed miracles of valor—achieved for himself a name and a post-captain's rank in the infant navy and finally was permitted to retire with a bullet lodged under his shoulder blade, a piece of silver trepanned in the top of his skull, a deep sword-cut across his face from the right temple over his nose to the left cheek—and with the honorary title of commodore.

      He was a perfect beauty about this time, no doubt, but that did not prevent him from receiving the hand of his cousin Henrietta Kalouga, who had waited for him many a weary year.

      No children blessed his late marriage, and as year after year passed, until himself and his wife were well stricken in years, people, who never lost interest in the great estate, began to wonder to which among his tribe of impoverished relations Nickolas Waugh would bequeath the manor of Luckenough.

      His choice fell at length upon his orphan grandniece, the beautiful Edith Lance, whom he took from the Catholic Orphan Asylum, where she had found refuge since the death of her parents and placed in one of the best convent schools in the South.

      At the age of seventeen Edith was brought home from school and established at Luckenough as the adopted daughter and acknowledged heiress of her uncle.

      Delicate, dreamy and retiring, and tinged with a certain pensiveness, the effect of too much early sorrow and seclusion upon a very sensitive temperament, Edith better loved the solitude of the grand old forest of St. Mary's or the loneliness of her own shaded rooms at Luckenough than any society the humdrum neighborhood could offer her. And when at the call of social duty she did go into company, she exercised a refining and subduing influence, involuntary as it was potent.

      Yet in that lovely, fragile form, in that dreaming, poetical soul, lay

       undeveloped a latent power of heroism soon to be aroused into action.

       "Darling of all hearts and eyes," Edith had been at home a year when the

       War of 1812 broke out.

      Maryland, as usual, contributed her large proportion of volunteers to the defense of the country. All men capable of bearing arms rapidly mustered into companies and hastened to put themselves at the disposal of the government.

      The lower counties of Maryland were left comparatively unprotected. Old men, women, children and negroes were all that remained in charge of the farms and plantations. Yet remote from the scenes of conflict and hitherto undisturbed by the convulsions of the great world, they reposed in fancied safety and never thought of such unprecedented misfortunes as the evils of the war penetrating to their quiet homes.

      But their rest of security was broken by a tremendous shock. The British fleet under Admiral Sir A. Cockburn suddenly entered the Chesapeake. And the quiet, lonely shores of the bay became the scene of a warfare scarcely paralleled in atrocity in ancient or modern times.

      If among the marauding band of licensed pirates and assassins there was one name more dreaded, more loathed and accursed than the rest, it was that of the brutal and ferocious Thorg—the frequent leader of foraging parties, the unsparing destroyer of womanhood, infancy and age, the jackal and purveyor of Admiral Cockburn. If anywhere there was a beautiful woman unprotected, or a rich plantation house ill-defended, this jackal was sure to scent out "the game" for his master, the lion. And many were the comely maidens and youthful wives seized and carried off by this monster.

      The Patuxent and the Wicomico, with the coast between them, offered no strong temptation to a rapacious foe, and the inhabitants reposed in the fancied security of their isolation and unimportance. The business of life went on, faintly and sorrowfully, to be sure, but still went on. The village shops at B—— and C—— were kept open, though tended chiefly by women and boys. The academicians at the little college pursued their studies or played at forming juvenile military companies. The farms and plantations were cultivated chiefly under the direction of ladies whose husbands, sons and brothers were absent with the army. No one thought of danger to St. Mary's.

      Most terrible was the awakening from this dream of safety, when, on the morning of the 17th of August, the division under the command of Admiral Cockburn—the most dreaded and abhorred of all—was seen to enter the mouth of the Patuxent in full sail for Benedict. Nearly all the able-bodied men were absent with the army at the time when the combined military and naval forces tinder Admiral Cockburn and General Ross landed at that place. None remained to guard the homes but aged men, women, infants and negroes. A universal panic seized the neighborhood and nothing occurred to the defenseless people but instant flight. Females and children were hastily put into carriages, the most valuable items of plate or money hastily packed up, negroes mustered and the whole caravan put upon a hurried march for Prince George's, Montgomery or other upper counties of the State. With very few exceptions, the farms and plantations were evacuated and left to the mercy of the invaders.

      At sunrise all was noise, bustle and confusion at Luckenough.

      The lawn was filled with baggage wagons, horses, mules, cows, oxen, sheep, swine, baskets of poultry, barrels of provisions, boxes of property, and men and maid servants hurrying wildly about among them, carrying trunks and parcels, loading carts, tackling harness, marshaling cattle and making other preparations for a rapid retreat toward Commodore Waugh's patrimonial estate in Montgomery County.

      Edith was placed upon her pony and attended by her old maid Jenny and her old groom Oliver.

      Commodore and Mrs. Waugh entered the family carriage, which they pretty well filled up. Mrs. Waugh's woman sat upon the box behind and the Commodore's man drove the coach.

      And the whole family party set forward on their journey. They went in advance of the caravan so as not to be hindered and inconvenienced by its slow and cumbrous movements. A ride of three miles through the old forest brought them to the open, hilly country. Here the road forked. And here the family were to separate.

      It had been arranged that as Edith was too delicate to bear the forced march of days' and nights' continuance before they could reach Montgomery, she should proceed to Hay Hill, a plantation near the line of Charles County, owned by Colonel Fairlie, whose young daughter Fanny, recently made a bride, had been the schoolmate of Edith.

      Here, at the fork, the party halted to take leave.

      Commodore Waugh called his niece to ride up to the carriage window and gave her many messages for Colonel Fairlie, for Fanny and for Fanny's young bridegroom, and many charges to be careful and prudent, and not to ride out unattended, etc.

      And then he called up the two old negroes and charged them to see their young mistress safely at Hay Hill and then to return to Luckenough and take care of the house and such things as were felt behind in case the British should not visit it, and to shut up the house after them in case they should come and