This mansion I fancy surrounded by a spacious picketed
rampart, presenting its bristling points to the four quarters of the
compass, and accessible only through a gateway of ponderous timber
studded thick with nails: the whole offering defiance to the grim
savage who might chance to prowl within the frown of its midnight
shadow.
Here Talbot spent the greater portion of the year with his wife and
children. Here he had his yacht or shallop on the river, and often
skimmed this beautiful expanse of water in pursuit of its abundant
game,--those hawks of which tradition preserves the memory his
companions and auxiliaries in this pastime. Here, too, he had his
hounds and other hunting-dogs to beat up the game for which the banks
of Elk River are yet famous.
This sylvan lodge was cheered and refined by the presence of his wife
and children, whose daily household occupations were assisted by
numerous servants chosen from the warm-hearted people who had left
their own Green Isle to find a home in this wilderness.
Amidst such scenes and the duties of her station we may suppose that
Mrs. Talbot, a lady who could not but have relinquished many comforts
in her native land for this rude life of the forest, found sufficient
resource to quell the regrets of many fond memories of the home and
friends she had left behind, and to reconcile her to the fortunes of
her husband, to whom, as we shall see, she was devoted with an ardor
that no hardship or danger could abate.
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