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expand1997 (1)
1Author:  Caruthers William Alexander 1802-1846Add
 Title:  The Knights of the Horse-shoe  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Modern English collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: Dear Sir—This letter will be handed to you by one of the most unfortunate adherents of the Pretender. Start not my dear Sir—he is but one of the Scottish jacobins, and will in no wise compromise you. The very fact of his seeking your country is evidence enough if it were wanting, that he desires to be at peace from the toils and dangers of political partizanship. These are claims enough for citizenship you may think, but not warrant sufficient to claim your personal friendship. He has these also, for he was one of those unfortunate men who befriended and supported your late kinsman to the last. He protests that he will in no wise compromise your Excellency with the ministry or their adherents on your side of the water, and has begged me not to write, but knowing that you would delight to befriend so staunch an adherent of the unfortunate General, I have insisted on his taking a sealed packet at all events, as it would contain other matters than those relating purely to himself. And now for those matters. He will be accompanied by a great many ruined families of rather a higher class than that from which your immigrants are generally furnished—they, too, are worn out in spirit and in fortune, with the ceaseless struggles between the hereditary claimant of the crown and the present occupant. They see, also, breakers ahead. The Queen's health is far from being stable, and in case of her sudden demise there will be an awful struggle here. Are they not right then to gather up the little remnant of their property and seek an asylum on your peaceful shores? Your note of last night, containing an invitation to Temple Farm, from Kate, has just been received. I will go, but for a reason, among others, which I fear my ever kind friend, Kate, will consider any thing but complimentary—it is because this house is haunted, and I can no longer stay in it. Look not so grave, dear father, 'tis no ghost. I wish it was, or he was, for it is that same tedious, tiresome, persecuting, Harry Lee. I have been most anxiously expecting your return; but, as it seems, you have become a permanent fixture at Temple Farm, it is but right that I should grow along side of the parent stem. The townsfolk are even more anxious for your return than I am. I tell them you ran away from practice, but it seems the more you desire to run away from it, the more they run after you. Few people in this dreary world have been able to effect so much unmixed good as you have, and for that, I thank God. Dear Father, I have no desire to live but for your sake, and that the short time we are to live together may not be diminished by any act of mine, I will be with you presently. Our poor pensioners and invalids are all doing as well as usual, and I leave them in the hands of the Rev. Mr. Jones, who, I know, will care for them as we would. He is surely one of God's chosen instruments for doing good in this world. He has shouldered his cross in earnest, and devoutly does he labor to advance the Redeemer's kingdom. “Dear Sir.—You will no doubt be surprised that I date this letter from the county jail, instead of the barracks, but, Sir, so it is—deeply mortifying as it is to me to state the fact. I had scarcely alighted in the capital, after marching the soldiers to the garrison, before I was waited upon by the Deputy Sheriff of the county, with a bail writ, (or whatever that process is called by which the law seizes a man's person,) at the suit of Henry Lee, Esq., and for the very money which your Excellency was mainly instrumental in procuring at his hands for me. You will recollect, no doubt, that as a mere matter of form, (so the gentleman expressed it,) I gave him a note of hand for the amount. Unfortunately I paid away part of the sum for my passage money, and the remainder to recruit my dilapidated wardrobe, so that instant payment was out of the question. None of my new and kind friends were in the city. I had, indeed, hoped to find the good Doctor at home, but unfortunately for me he was absent in the country. “Dear Sir: I owe you an apology for the very abrupt manner in which I left your house, where I had been tacitly, as it were, left in charge of the ladies; but the fact is, Sir, that I found the young person whom you had hastily employed as Tutor, presumptuous and impertinent, and that I must either degrade myself by a personal encounter with him, or leave the premises. I chose the latter, and had hoped to have paid my respects to your Excellency before you left the capital, but was detained by unavoidable legal business until you had unfortunately left the city. It is useless now to enter into particulars as to his conduct in your absence; for the evidence is now before me, that he is such a gross impostor and swindler, that it is scarcely worth while to inquire into minor particulars of conduct. While I was in the very act of consulting Attorney General Clayton, (who is also my own legal adviser,) about the steps necessary to be taken in order to repossess the funds out of which I weakly suffer myself to be cheated, I received a ship letter by way of York. Whom does your Excellency suppose that letter was from? Why, sir, from Mr. Henry Hall, my cousin, the real gentleman, whose name and character this base impostor had assumed for the lowest purposes. You will recollect that I had written to the young man before this person appeared at your house, informing him of my aunt's will. This letter which I have received is in answer to that one, and states among other things that the writer would sail in the very first vessel for this country after the one which would bring the letter, so that by the time that this pseudo Mr. Hall manages to release himself from prison, where I have snugly stowed him, the real personage, whose name he has assumed, will be here to confront him. I am delighted that I am thus able to relieve your Excellency from the disagreeable duty of unmasking the impostor; for if your Excellency will permit me to say so, your kindly nature had so far led you astray with regard to this man, that you might have found it rather unpleasant to deal with him. Leave all that to me, Sir—I will give him his deserts, be well assured; and if he escapes with whole ears and a sound skin, he may thank the clemency of the law, and not mine. Dear Ellen: Such a friendship as ours can bear the imposition with which I am about to tax you. You know the sad tale of this poor Indian girl, and how it lacerates all our hearts afresh, even to look upon her; and knowing this, you will do all those little kindnesses for her that we cannot, and which her situation requires. She sees that we cannot look upon her with complacency, and now she misinterprets it. God knows we wish to wreak no vengeance upon her for my poor brother's death. Do make her sensible of all this. You, my dear Ellen, that know so well how to compass these delicate offices so much better than any one else—do give her all the comfort the case admits of, and administer such consolation as her peculiar nature requires. Explain to her our feelings, and that they are the farthest in the world removed from unkindness Oh, Ellen, you know what a shock we have sustained, and will, I know, acquit us of any mawkish sensibility in the case. I trust her entirely to your kindness and discretion. My father has just stepped in, and anticipating my object, begged to see this note; and he now begs me to say to you, that Wingina must be closely watched, else her brother will contrive some subtle scheme to whisk her off again. I again resume my sweet correspondence with you, after an interval it seems to me of an age: computed by what I have (may I not say we have) suffered. But during all my unexampled difficulties and trials, one constant soarce of consolation remained to me. It was your steady constancy. It is true, that for a time, I was laboring under a delusion in regard to it, but even during that time, you were as unwavering as before. No portion of blame can attach to you, that I was led astray. You, my Ellen, have been like my evening and morning star—the last ray of serene comfort at night, and the brightest dawn of hope in the morning. From day to day, and from year to year, have you clung to the memory of the youth to whom you plighted your young affections—through good and through evil report—through life and in death, (as was supposed) you have without wavering or turning aside, cherished the first bright morning dream of youthful love. Do you know, my Ellen, that the world scarcely believes in the reality of such early attachments enduring to the end. The heartless throng know not, my sweet playmate, of the little romantic world we possess within ourselves. They have all gone astray after strange gods, and cannot believe that others will be more true and devoted than they have been. Especially has the odium of all such failures been laid to the charge of your sex, but I am sure unjustly. The first slight or unkindness nearly always proceeds from the other, and this slight or unkindness cannot be blazoned to the world—it is hidden within the recesses of the sufferer's heart, and pride (perhaps proper maidenly pride) prevents it from ever being known. How happy are we my Ellen, that not a shadow of distrust has fallen out between us—if indeed I except your momentary confounding me with the gentleman whose name I had assumed, and my temporary mistake about my brother's marriage with you. You see I have brought myself to write that name. While I am upon the subject of Miss Elliot's engagement, permit me to explain one thing which I omitted in the hurry of departure, and the confusion which attended all its exciting scenes. That young lady though present at the masking scene at the Governor's house, and knowing of my design to present myself in disguise, among my old associates, was not made acquainted with the name or occupation which I would assume. The resolution to adopt that name was seized upon after the departure of that young lady and her father. Hence her supposition, on hearing that Mr. Hall had arrived in the Colony, that it was her own Henry. I am led to think of these things, by seeing, so frequently, this young gentleman, with whom I was, and am, on the most intimate terms. His distress of mind is truly pitiable—he appears like one physically alive and well, and yet dead to all hope. Not absolutely dead to all hope either, for you should have seen how the blessed, but dormant, faculty flashed up for a moment or two, when I told him, a little while ago, that there was a prospect of an expedition being sent ahead of the troops, in pursuit of the assassins and robbers who murdered our old friend and stole his mistress. Oh, if he could be sent off upon such an expedition, what a blessed relief the activity and excitement of the pursuit would be to him. But the Governor, though sympathizing fully with him and me, would not consent to it, and I must say his reasons were to me, satisfactory; not so, however, with my poor friend; he is dissatisfied with the Governor on account of it, and if it were not for my restraining and urgent counsel, he would start off, single handed, in pursuit. The fact is, his apprehensions for the fate of the poor girl, whether dead or alive, are so desponding, that the madness and rashness of such an adventure, only add new charms to it, in his eyes, and I can only seduce him from such wild designs by dwelling upon the known clemency of the Indians to other females, who have for months and years remained captives with them. I have exhausted all my recollections of the kind, and I have put the scout, Jarvis, in possession of his dreadful secret, and commanded him to detail all his knowledge favorable to my views. At this very moment he is walking with Joe, among the tall pines, his melancholy eye wandering among the stars, while Joe is telling a long story of a Mrs. Thompson, who was taken prisoner by them and carried beyond the mountains. I at first suspected my new forest friend, of romancing in the wildest vein, and inventing as he went along, for the justifiable purpose, as it seemed to me, of plucking the rooted sorrow from the heart of my friend, but I am satisfied now that it is a true narrative, because he recounted several circumstances about the route to the mountains, which he had before told me he had procured from an old lady, who had been a prisoner among the Indians. Seeing that he was, for the time, so absorbed with the story of the scout, I have stolen away, my Ellen, to hold this sweet converse with you. If you had but known the charming girl, about whom my friend thus mourns, you would neither be surprised nor jealous that even I feel an anxious interest in her fate. Think too of her sad history,—the loss of her uncle by whom she was adopted, and upon whom she doted as a father, little less fond than the real one whom she has now lost, also. Think, too, of the dreadful manner of their two deaths —of her nearest and dearest kinsmen. Then bring before your mind the highly educated, delicate and sensitive girl herself—torn from the reeking body of her deceased parent; and borne a captive among a rude and wild people, not one word of whose language she understands. Oh its a dreadful fate for one like her. She is a most lovely girl in every sense of the word, and as good as she is beautiful! I feel a double interest in her fate, because her sad lot is so much like my own. We were first wrecked by the same disastrous political storm—thrown upon the same shores, and among the same people for a time. Well Bill, I'm dad shamed if I don't bust if I don't write to you a spell—the fact is Bill, I've kept company with these here gold laced gentry so long that I'm gettin' spiled—fact! I rubbed myself all over last night head and ears with salt for fear on't. Yes, and if you and Charley and Ikey don't take keer, I'll cut you when I come back. But without any joke at all about it, I've got into the greatest mess that ever the likes of you clapped eyes on. There's that Mr. Hall—the real genuine Mr. Hall, the one as come last; O Lord if you could only see how he takes on—dash my flint, if I don't think he's a leetle teched in the upper story. All day long he rides that black horse—(and he's dressed in black you know) and looks as if he was a goin' to his grandmother's funeral. Poor lad, they say he's got cause enough, the yaller niggers have run away with his sweet heart, but you don't know nothin' about them sort of tender things, Bill, its only a throwin' of pearls before swine to tell you of 'em, else I would tell you that Mr. Hall and me is exactly in the same fix. Yes, you and Charley may laugh, confound you, if so be you ever spell this out, We're exactly in the same situation—the yaller niggers has run away with my sweet heart too. You know the little Ingin gal that asked me for that lock 'o hair, but you know al about it and what's the use of swettin' over agin. Well, Squire Lee, that Mr. Hall that was tried for killin' the Governor's son; well, he says she's a ruined gal, and to hear him talk, you'd think that she was dead and buried and he a sayin' of the funeral service over her. I tell you Bill, these gentry are queerish folks, they don't know nothin' of human nature. He says he wants to know if I would take another man's cast off mistress. Now, Bill, ain't her lover dead, and could'nt I make an honest woman of her, by a marryin' of her, I'd like to know that. But the best part of the story is to come yit. The Governor's been axed about it, and he's all agreed, and says moreover, that he'll settle fifty pounds a year on me, if the gal will have me. So you see, Bill, she's a fortune. Did'nt I tell you that I was a goin to seek my fortune, and that you had better come along. But I've talked about myself long enough, now let me tell you something of our betters. The old Governor, I tell you what, he's a tip top old feller, in the field. He don't know nothing about fightin' Ingins yit, but I'll tell you, he'll catch it mighty quick; he makes every one stand up to the rack, and as for running away from an enemy, it ain't in his dictionary. I am told he drinks gunpowder every mornin' in his bitters, and as for shootin,' he's tip top at that, too. He thinks nothin' of takin' off a wild turkeys' head with them there pistols of his'n. You may'nt believe the story about the gunpowder, but I got from old June, his shoe black, who sleeps behind his tent, and I reckon he ought to know, if any body does. He rides a hoss as if he rammed down the gunpowder with half a dozen ramrods. You ought to see him a ridin' a review of a mornin'. I swang if his cocked hat don't look like a pictur', and I'm told he's all riddled with bullets too, and that he sometimes picks the lead out of his teeth yit. He's a a whole team, Bill; set that down in your books. The next man to the Governor is Mr. Frank, that I told you of a while ago; he belongs to the gunpowder breed too he's got an eye like a eagle, and, Bill when they made a gintleman of him they spiled one of the best scouts in all these parts. If there's any fightin' you take my word for it, he'll have his share. Some of the men do say that he was for upsettin' the Queen when he was to England, and that's the reason he came over in disguise. One thing I know, he's got no airs about him; he talks to me just as he does to the Governor, and this present writin', as the lawyers say, is writ on his camp stool and with his pen and paper. I guess he'll find his pen druv up to the stump. Well, I suppose you want to know what I call this camp nigger foot for. I'll tell you, for I christened it myself. I was a followin' of a fresh trail as hard as one of the Governor's bounds arter a buck— when what should we light upon, but the track of of a big nigger's foot in the mud here among em—fact! I told the Governor afore I seed the print of the nigger's foot that they had had some spy or another at Williamsburg, else they would'nt a know'd the waggons as had the powder in 'em. Oh, I forgot to tell you that the yaller raskels killed one of the sentinels, and stole a heap of powder and lead. Yes, and they had the wagon tops marked with red paint. The ink would blister the paper, could I be guilty of the hypocrisy of commencing a letter to you with an endearing epithet, after all that is past and gone. Indeed, it was my intention never to have addressed you again in any manner this side of the grave. I thought you had done your worst towards me and mine, and I was resolved, if I could not forgive, that I would at least bear it in silence. But I was mistaken, you had not done your worst, as this night's experience teaches me. I find that my heart yearns towards every thing connected with the happy days of our infancy. Over many of these you have power, and through these you can wound me grievously. I do not, and will not, charge you with suborning one of our father's faithful servants to his own ruin and disgrace. I leave it entirely with you and your God.— But if even innocent, (which I trust in God you are,) yet you are responsible for their conduct. Nay, the world, even your old associates here, hold you now as the accessory before the fact, to this poor fellow's crime. Oh, Henry, how have your passions led you on, from step to step, to this degradation! Can you be the proud boy that I once knew as an affectionate brother? But I will not be weak; my object in writing is merely a matter of business. I have a proposition to make to you—it is that you abandon your home and country forever. Start not, but listen to me. You know that you will be largely indebted to me for the yearly proceeds of my property, every cent of which you have drawn, and which I understand you will not be able to repay, without sacrificing your own property. Now, I propose to give you a clear quittance for the whole of it, if you will sail for Europe before my return, and take poor Cæsar with you. I know that you can find means to liberate him— indeed, I do not think the Governor himself will be much displeased to find this scheme carried into effect upon his return. Reflect well upon it, and may God forgive you for your past errors. I shall never cease to pray not only for that, but that I may myself learn to grant you that tree and full forgiveness which I daily ask him for myself. Dear Frank.—But a few days have elapsed since your departure, yet it seems an age. Short as the time is, however, I must write now in compliance with my promise, or lose all opportunity of writing, until the expedition is on its return. The courier who takes this, it is hoped, will overtake you near the foot of the mountains. First and foremost, then, I must be selfish enough to begin at home. Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh, and I suppose the pen writeth. You will, I am sure, be surprised to learn that my father seems to miss your society even more than I. After your departure, he would sit up for hours, wrapped up in his own thoughts. At first I did not heed this particularly, because he often does so, when any of his patients are sick unto death; but I soon found that my caresses—a successful remedy generally—were entirely unheeded; and once I saw a tear stealing down his dear and venerable face. I could submit tacitly no longer, but begged him to tell me what disturbed him. He said he was beginning to find out my value just as he was about to lose me. “Dear father,” said I “I will never, never leave you. We have been too long all in all to each other!” Was I not right, Frank, in giving him this assurance, and will you not doubly assure him, when you come back? I know you will. “How can you make any such promise, my child,” he asked, “when you have given your whole heart and soul to another?” Now, was not this a strange speech for the good old man to make? Do you not discover a little—just a little—jealousy in it? I thought I did, and I laughed at the idea, though the tears were coursing each other down his cheeks faster than ever; and I taxed him with the strange manifestation. “Well,” said he, “have you not been wife, and daughter, and companion, and comforter, and nurse, and every thing to me—and how can I live, when all that gives life and cheerfulness to my house is gone? It will be putting out the light of mine eyes—for my Ellen, all is dark and dreary, when your shadow does not fall within the range of these fast failing orbs.” According to promise, you see I have begun to write you a letter—and one dozen have I commenced before, but tore them up, because I did not know exactly what word to prefix to your name. First I tried plain Bernard—that looked too cold and abrupt; and then Mr. Moore—and that appeared too business like and formal; and then I began without any prefix at all. At last, I went to Ellen in my distress, and she rated me roundly for being ashamed to salute with an endearing epithet a man to whom I had promised my hand, and given my heart. Nor was that all—she took me to task for still wrapping myself up in that reserve which the world compels us to wear, instead of endeavoring, as is my duty, (you know I call her Mrs. Duty,) to establish an unreserved confidence between us, and to learn and betray at the same time all those peculiarities of thought and feeling which go to make up our identity. As I told her, that is the very thing which I dread. My Dear, Sir—At length we have scaled the Blue Mountains, but not without a sharp skirmish with the savages, and many of them, I am sorry to say, were of those who so lately received our bounty, and were besides objects of such deep solicitude to us. All our labors, my dear Sir, towards civilizing and christianizing even the tributaries, have been worse than thrown away. Mr. Boyle's splendid scheme of philanthropy is a failure, and we, his humble agents, have no other consolation left, but a consciousness of having done our duty, with a perseverance which neither scorn nor scepticism could not turn aside. Let it not be said hereafter, that no effort was made in Virginis to treat the Aborigines with the same spirit of clemency and mildness which was so successful in Pennsylvania. Far greater efforts have been made by us, than was ever made in that favored colony. The difference in the result is no doubt owing to the fact, that the subjects with whom we have had to deal were irretrievably spoiled before they came under our charge—not so with those of Pennsylvania. I mention these things to you, because you know that it was my determination when I sat out, to cross the mountains, peaceably if I could, and forcibly if I must. The latter has been the alternative forced upon me. From almost the very moment of setting out, our steps have been dogged, and our flanks harrassed by these lawless men, and more than one murder has been committed upon our sentries. But of these things we can converse when we meet. I suppose you are anxious to hear something of the country, which I have so long desired to see with my own eyes. Well, Sir, the descriptions given to us at Temple Farm by the interpreter were not at all exaggerated, and were, besides, wonderfully accurate in a geographical point of view. It is indeed true enough that there are double ranges of mountains, and that the sources of the Mississippi do not rise here. We are now in a valley between these ranges, with the western mountains distinctly in view, and the eastern ones immediately in our rear. This valley seems to extend for hundreds of miles to the northeast and south-west, and may be some fifty or sixty broad. I learn from my prisoners that it has been mostly kept sacred by the Indians as a choice hunting ground, and has not been the permanent residence of any of them, but that they came and squatted during the hunting season. All this the interpreter kept (very wisely, as he thought, no doubt) to himself. We have not yet seen the miraculous boiling and medicinal springs, nor the bridge across the mountains; but parties of exploration are daily going out, and such extravagant accounts as they give of the game, and the country, and the rivers, and the magnificent prospects, beggar my pen to describe. I can see enough, my dear Sir, from the heights in my near neighborhood, to know that it is one of the most charming retreats in the world. I do not hesitate to predict that a second Virginia will grow up here, which will rival the famed shores of the Chesapeake; but the products will be different, and the people must be different; for it is a colder region. We have already had nipping frosts, and some ice upon the borders of the streams. I am once more writing from a couch of some pain and suffering, but thank God not like the last from which I addressed you that dismal letter, which I then supposed would be my last. I have no such apprehensions now. My wounds are in a fair way, and I am even permitted to walk about this large tent—(the Governor's marquee) and above all, I am permitted to write to you. My Dear Sir: I have received your letter of the 5th inst., and in reply to it, can only say what I some years past said to my friend George W. Summers,* *The Hon. Geo. W. Summers, the present representative in Congress, from the Kenawha District, in Virginia. on the subject of your letter. I said to him, that I had seen in the possession of the eldest branch of my family, a Golden Horse-Shoe set with garnets, and having inscribed on it the motto: “Sic juval transcendere montes,” which from tradition, I always understood was presented by Governor Spotswood, to my Grandfather, as one of many gentlemen who acompanied him across the mountains.
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