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Page 52
"I think with you, my child," replied Mrs. Heywood,
looking approvingly at her daughter, "that it is our
duty, as it assuredly will be our pleasure to accompany
your father wherever he may go."
It was now arranged that Mr. Heywood, furnished with a
considerable sum of money in gold, should set out alone
on the following night for their new destination, and
make the necessary preparations for their reception,
while his wife, through her agent, should endeavor to
dispose of the estate. As it would require some time
for this, and as the arrangements at Chicago could not
well be completed within several months, it was settled
that they should meet at Albany, early in the following
autumn, where they should proceed to take possession of
their new abode. For his better security and freedom from
interruption, Mr. Heywood, while travelling, was to assume
a feigned name, but his own was to be resumed immediately
after his arrival at Chicago, for neither he nor his
family could for a moment think of increasing the suspicion
of guilt, by continuing a name that was not their own;
and, finally, as a last measure of precaution, the free
servants of the establishment, had, with the exception
of Catharine, whom they were to take with them, been
discharged, while a purchaser having fortunately been
found, the slaves, with the estate, were handed over to
a new master, proverbial for his kindness to that usually
oppressed race. By these means they found themselves
provided with funds more than adequate to all their future
wants, the great bulk of the sum arising from the sale
of the estate being vested in two of the most stable
banks of the Union.
With the money he took with him, carefully deposited in
his saddlebags, for he performed the whole of the journey
on horseback, Mr. Heywood had caused the cottage already
described, to be built and furnished from Detroit, in
what, at that period, and so completely at the ultima
thule of American civilization, was considered a style
of great luxury. He had, however, shortly prior to his
setting out for Albany, purchased several hundred acres
of land, about two miles up the Southern branch of the
Chicago, leaving instructions with Le Noir, whom he had
engaged for a long term of service, to erect upon it a
log building and outhouses. This he had been induced to
do from that aching desire for physical exertion which
had been familiar to him from boyhood, and which he felt
could never be sufficiently indulged within the limited
compass of the little village itself--subjected as he
must be to the observation of the curious and the
impertinent. He returned from Albany after a few months'
absence, in the autumn of 1809, bringing with him his
friends who occupied the cottage, while he himself obtained
their assent that he should inhabit the farm house,
completed soon after his return. Here he cut with his
own hands, many a cord of the wood that his servants
floated down in rafts, not only for his own family, but
to supply the far more extensive wants of the garrison,
with which, however, he had little or no intercourse,
beyond that resulting from his business relations.
Such was the condition of things at the period at which
our narrative has opened. Maria Heywood had now been
three years an occupant of the cottage, and within that
time solitude and habits of reflection had greatly matured
her mind, as years had given every womanly grace to her
person. The past had also tended much to form her
character, upon which the development of physical beauty
so often depends. At her first debut into society at
Charleston, in her fourteenth year--an age that would
have been considered premature, but for the rapidity with
which form and intellect are known to ripen in that
precocious climate--she had received, but listened with
indifference to the vapid compliments of men whose
shallowness she was not slow to detect, and whose homage
conveyed rather a fulsome tribute to her mere personal
beauty, than a correct appreciation of her heart and
understanding. Not that it is to be inferred that she
prided herself unduly upon this latter, but because it
was by that standard of conduct chiefly, that she was
enabled to judge of the minds of those who evinced so
imperfect a knowledge of the female heart, when, emerging
from the gaiety of girlhood, it passes into the earnestness
of womanly feeling.
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