THE ARREST OF EMILY GEIGER.

THE FAIR MESSENGER.

BY BENSON J. LOSSING.

On a warm, hazy day in January, 1849, I was at Orangeburg, South Carolina, eighty miles west of Charleston. My purpose was to visit the battle-ground of Eutaw Springs, on the right bank of the Santee River, forty miles distant. I hired a horse and gig for the journey. The steed was fleet, and the road was level and smooth most of the way. It lay through cultivated fields and dark pine forests, and across dry swamps wherein the Spanish moss hung like trailing banners from the live-oak and cypress trees.

At sunset I had travelled thirty miles. I lodged at the house of a planter not far from Vance's Ferry, on the Santee, where I passed the evening with an intelligent and venerable woman (Mrs. Buxton) eighty-four years of age. She was a maiden of seventeen when the armies of Greene and Rawdon made lively times in the region of the Upper Santee, Catawba, Saluda, and Broad rivers. She knew Marion, and Sumter, and Horry, and other less famous partisans, who were frequently at her father's home, on the verge of a swamp not far from the High Hills of Santee.

"We were Whigs," she said, "but the Tories were so thick and cruel around us, when Rawdon was at Camden, that father had to pretend he was a King's man to save his life and property. Oh, those were terrible times, when one was not sure on going to bed that the house would not be burned before morning."

"Did you witness any exciting scenes yourself?" I inquired.

"Yes, many. One in particular so stirred my young blood that I actually resolved to put on brother Ben's clothes, take our old fowling-piece, join the Swamp Fox, as the British called Marion, and fight for freedom to call my soul my own."

"What was the event?" I asked.

"You have read, maybe," said Mrs. Buxton, "how Lord Rawdon, after chasing General Greene far toward the Saluda, suddenly turned back, abandoned Fort Ninety-Six, and retreated toward Charleston. Well, Greene sent Harry Lee, with his light-horse, to get in front of Rawdon before he should reach the ferry on the Congaree at Granby. He was anxious to call Marion and Sumter to the same point to help Lee. Sumter was then encamped a dozen miles south of our home."

The venerable woman's dark brown eyes sparkled with emotion as she proceeded with the story. She said her cousin, on Greene's staff at the time, told her that when the General called for a volunteer messenger to carry a letter to Sumter, not one of the soldiers offered to undertake the perilous task, for the way was swarming with Tories. Greene was perplexed. Brave and pretty Emily Geiger, the young daughter of a German planter in Fairfield District, had just arrived at head-quarters with important information for the General. She rode a spirited horse with the ease and grace of a dragoon. Emily saw the hesitation of the soldiers, and Greene's anxiety. Earnestly but modestly she said to the General, "May I carry the letter?"

Greene was astonished. He was unwilling to expose her to the dangers which he knew awaited a messenger, for the Tories were vigilant.

"They won't hurt a young girl, I am sure; and I know the way," said Emily.

Greene's want was great, and he accepted the proffer of important service, but with many misgivings. Fearing Emily might lose the letter on the way, he informed her of its contents, that she might deliver the message orally. She mounted her fleet horse, and with the General's blessing, and cheered by the admiring officers, she rode off on a brisk gallop. She crossed the Wateree River at the Camden ferry, and pressed on toward the High Hills of Santee.

Emily was riding at a rapid pace through an open, dry swamp, at noonday, when one of three Tory scouts, who were on the watch, seized her bridle and bade her halt. With perfect composure and firm voice she demanded by what authority she was arrested. The young man was confounded by the appearance and manner of his prisoner. They had observed a woman riding in apparent haste from the direction of Greene's army toward the camp of Sumter, and suspected her errand. She proved to be a young maiden as fair as a lily, with mild blue eyes, and a profusion of brown hair. The young scout, smitten with her beauty and air of innocence, released his hold upon the bridle, when an older companion, made of sterner stuff, seized the reins, and led the horse to an unoccupied house on the edge of the swamp, and bade her dismount. The younger scout gallantly assisted her to alight, and she was taken into the house. With proper delicacy, the scouts sent for Mrs. Buxton's mother, living a mile distant, to search Emily's person.

"I went with mother," said Mrs. Buxton, "to see a woman prisoner. The door of the house was guarded by the younger scout, who was Peter Simons, son of a neighbor two miles away—and a right gallant young fellow he was. After the war he married my sister, and that youngster who took your horse when you alighted is their grand-child."

"Then