Page:Adventures of Rachel Cunningham.djvu/32



If ever the devil had hand in giving a woman life and being, Rachel Cunningham, is most assuredly one who comes within his rightful claim as primary author of her existence; for though her outward person was beauteous to behold, it was the inborn, vindictive, vengeful spirit of a Bend that gave it animation to act and instigate to murder.

At this place, (Hagerstown Md.) she practised her wiles with more fatal effect, in the ultimate consequences than hitherto had marked her licentious career. She had by her intrigues obtained great notoriety, and personal intimacy was sought with her, and enjoyed by many gentlemen of consideration, as men of property age leading debauchees of the town and country; till at length, she attracted the amorous notice of the sheriff, George Van Swearingen, whose affections she ensnared, in the first instance, by an artfully-managed stratagem purposely planned and practiced to entrap him: she one day way-layed him, when it happened he had been engaged on some public duty, and was returning from it on foot; she had dressed and decorated her person that day, in the most effective manner she could to give her natural charms their full force of captivating influence for rendering conquest certain, and thus prepared she threw herself in his way; when chance favoured her, as if intentionally becoming an accomplice in her purpose, occasioned a horse, then passing, suddenly to start near her, just as the sheriff was approaching, on which she, pretending alarm at the accidental circumstance, fell as if in a fainting-fit, produced thereby, taking care to have the lower part of her clothes in no very decent state of disorder as she lay: Van Swearingen, as might be supposed, immediately flew to her assistance, raised her up again, and supported in his arms till she, in a few minutes, recovered from the fit she had counterfeited; when the, in a tone of most bewitching softness, thanked him for his kind attention. Struck with the beauty of a female of such seeming loveliness, he was instantly captivated. The trap so baited and the pigeon to