"Grey, Zane - Betty Zane" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grey Zane)

For a hundred years the stories of Betty and Isaac Zane have been familiar,
oft-repeated tales in my family--tales told with that pardonable ancestral
pride which seems inherent in every one. My grandmother loved to cluster the
children round her and tell them that when she was a little girl she had knelt
at the feet of Betty Zane, and listened to the old lady as she told of her
brother's capture by the Indian Princess, of the burning of the Fort, and of
her own race for life. I knew these stories by heart when a child.

Two years ago my mother came to me with an old note book which had been
discovered in some rubbish that had been placed in the yard to burn. The book
had probably been hidden in an old picture frame for many years. It belonged
to my great-grandfather, Col. Ebenezer Zane. From its faded and time-worn
pages I have taken the main facts of my story. My regret is that a worthier
pen than mine has not had this wealth of material.

In this busy progressive age there are no heroes of the kind so dear to all
lovers of chivalry and romance. There are heroes, perhaps, but they are the
patient sad-faced kind, of whom few take cognizance as they hurry onward. But
cannot we all remember some one who suffered greatly, who accomplished great
deeds, who died on the battlefield--some one around whose name lingers a halo
of glory? Few of us are so unfortunate that we cannot look backward on kith or
kin and thrill with love and reverence as we dream of an act of heroism or
martyrdom which rings down the annals of time like the melody of the
huntsman's horn, as it peals out on a frosty October morn purer and sweeter
with each succeeding note.

If to any of those who have such remembrances, as well as those who have not,
my story gives an hour of pleasure I shall be rewarded.



PROLOGUE


On June 16, 1716, Alexander Spotswood, Governor of the Colony of Virginia, and
a gallant soldier who had served under Marlborough in the English wars, rode,
at the head of a dauntless band of cavaliers, down the quiet street of quaint
old Williamsburg.

The adventurous spirits of this party of men urged them toward the land of the
setting sun, that unknown west far beyond the blue crested mountains rising so
grandly before them.

Months afterward they stood on the western range of the Great North mountains
towering above the picturesque Shenendoah Valley, and from the summit of one
of the loftiest peaks, where, until then, the foot of a white man had never
trod, they viewed the vast expanse of plain and forest with glistening eyes.
Returning to Williamsburg they told of the wonderful richness of the newly
discovered country and thus opened the way for the venturesome pioneer who was