the effect of too much early sorrow and seclusion upon a very sensitive
temperament, Edith better loved the solitude of the grand old forest of
St. Mary's or the loneliness of her own shaded rooms at Luckenough than
any society the humdrum neighborhood could offer her. And when at the
call of social duty she did go into company, she exercised a refining
and subduing influence, involuntary as it was potent.

Yet in that lovely, fragile form, in that dreaming, poetical soul, lay
undeveloped a latent power of heroism soon to be aroused into action.
"Darling of all hearts and eyes," Edith had been at home a year when the
War of 1812 broke out.

Maryland, as usual, contributed her large proportion of volunteers to
the defense of the country. All men capable of bearing arms rapidly
mustered into companies and hastened to put themselves at the disposal
of the government.

The lower counties of Maryland were left comparatively unprotected. Old
men, women, children and negroes were all that remained in charge of the
farms and plantations. Yet remote from the scenes of conflict and
hitherto undisturbed by the convulsions of the great world, they reposed
in fancied safety and never thought of such unprecedented misfortunes as
the evils of the war penetrating to their quiet homes.

But their rest of security was broken by a tremendous shock. The British
fleet under Admiral Sir A. Cockburn suddenly entered the Chesapeake. And
the quiet, lonely shores of the bay became the scene of a warfare
scarcely paralleled in atrocity in ancient or modern times.

If among the marauding band of licensed pirates and assassins there was