Page:The Conquest.djvu/136

 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.