Explore "The Amulet" by Mary Noailles Murfree on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When the rescuing party set forth the following day, Arabella and her aunt, with much perplexity and disapproval of frontier methods, watched through an embrasure on the southern bastion the boats pulling down the river. The men of the escort were evidently in the highest spirits; great hilarity prevailed amongst those warned for duty as they ran to and fro on the parade and in and out of the barracks, making their preparations for the expedition. They were loud of voice, calling directions, suggestions, admonitions, hither and thither, in clear, resonant tones; swift of movement, hardly a step taken that was not at a double-quick. They were notably clean and dapper of aspect, in their cocked hats, red coats, long leggings, drawn high over the trousers, and white cross-belts, glittering from the effects of pipe-clay, their hair in stiff plaited queues, decorously powdered.
"And not one of them knows whether he will have so much as his own scalp to bring home with him, by the time this fashionable, aboriginal Drum is over," remarked Mrs. Annandale. "I always thought that men are constitutionally knaves, my dear, but I begin to fear, I greatly fear, they are instead constitutionally fools."