University of Virginia Library

4. BOOK THIRD.
INVASION AND RETRIBUTION.

Henry V.

The Broken Heart.

Love lies a-bleeding.

Ford.

1. CHAPTER I.
RANGERS' REVELS.

Hamilton Bogart.

A year has passed away—the second year of the
Revolution—and Greyslaer is not nearer the fruition
of his hopes than in the hour when they first dawned
anew upon his soul. The calls of military duty
have, in the mean time, carried him far from his native
valley, to which, with a sword whose temper
has been tried on many a Southern field, he is now
returning; for New-York at this moment needs all
her children to defend her soil. Burgoyne upon
the Hudson, and St. Leger along the Mohawk, are
marching to unite their forces in the heart of the
province, and sweep the country from the lakes to
the seaboard.

The ascendency which, upon the first outbreak
of hostilities, the Whigs of Tryon county attained
over the opposite faction, seemed, at this period of
the great struggle, about to be wrenched from their
hands. The conspiring bands of Tories which had
been driven out or disarmed when Schuyler marched
upon Johnstown and crushed the first rising of
the royalists, had lifted the royal standard anew
upon the border, and rumours of the thousands who
were flocking to it struck dismay into the patriot
councils. Brant and his Mohawks had always kept
the field in guerilla warfare, and the frontiersmen
were habituated to the terror of his name; but now
Guy Johnson, who had been stirring up the more
remote tribes, was said to have thickened his files
with a cloud of savage warriors. The combined
Indian and refugee forces had rendezvoused at Oswego
thoroughly armed and appointed for an efficient
campaign; and Barry St. Leger, who took
command of the whole, boasted confidently that he
would effect a conjunction with Burgoyne, if that
leader could make good his march upon Albany.

Availing himself of the numerous streams and
lakes of the country to transport his artillery and
heavy munitions, St. Leger advanced with forced
marches from the wilds of the North and the West,
and, penetrating into the Valley of the Mohawk, invested
Fort Stanwix, the portal of the whole region
beyond to the Hudson. The province far and wide
was alarmed at this bold and hitherto successful invasion;
and some of the sturdiest patriots of Tryon
county stood aghast at the incoming torrent which
threatened to overwhelm them. But the anxiety of
the mass was more akin to the alarm that arouses
than to the terror which paralyzes action. There
is a spirit abroad among the people; a spirit of determined
resolve, of vengeful hatred against those

who have come back to desolate the land with fire
and sword. Sir John Johnson, who stands high
in the councils of the invading general, has approached
the threshold of his fortified patrimony;
but the arrogant though brave baronet, should he
penetrate as far as the broad domain over which his
family once exercised an almost princely sway, will
find that strange changes have taken place among
his rustic and once humble neighbours.

The march of armies, the pomp and parade of
martial times, with many of the dark incidents of
civil feud shadowing the pageantry of regular war-fare,
have been beheld in the Valley of the Mohawk,
and the lapse of a short two years has markedly
altered the character of the district in which
the principal scenes of our story are laid. The inhabitants
are no longer gathered together in village
or hamlet to reason calmly about their rights, and
pass formal resolutions upon the conduct of their
rulers. The reckless assertion, the hot and hasty
reply, the careless laugh or fierce oath which cuts
short the laggard argument, show that men's tempers
have altered, and the times of debate have long
since given way to those of action. The soldier has
taken the place of the civilian; the military muster
supplanted the political assemblage; and the plain
yeomanry of a rural district are no longer recognisable
in the gay military groups that seem to have
usurped their place at the roadside inn. Now, especially,
when the proclamation of the commandant
of the district has summoned every male inhabitant
capable of bearing arms to the field, the high-ways
are filled with yeomanry corps, battalions of
infantry, volunteers from the villages, and squadrons
of mounted rangers from the remote settlements, all
urging their way to the general rendezvous at Fort
Dayton.

Hitherward, too, occasionally, intermingled with
these raw levies, were likewise marching bodies of
experienced partisan troops, which, as the scene of
war shifted from one part of the northern frontier to
another, had kept the field from the first. Armed
and trained to serve as either cavalry or infantry,
the “Mohawk Yægers,” as they called themselves,
were found acting now as videttes and foraging
parties for the Congressional forces; fighting now
by themselves with the Indians in guerilla conflict,
and now again co-operating with the Continental
army in regular warfare. The public-house of
Nicholas Wingear, which lay immediately upon the
road to Fort Dayton, was at this time a favourite
stopping-place of refreshment with the different
corps which composed this motley army, and a
small command had halted there for the night at the
time we resume the thread of our story.

The old stone-built inn, with its ruined sheds and
outhouses of half-hewn logs, which used to stand
somewhere about midway upon the road between
Canajoharie and German Flats, has probably long
since given place to some more modern hostelrie.
Mine ancient host, too, the worthy Deacon Wingear
—unless the flavour of his liquor lives in the memory
of some octogenarian toper—is perhaps likewise
forgotten. It is not less our duty, however, to
chronicle his name here while opening this act of
our drama beneath the hospitable roof of Nicholas.

The apartment in which the ranger corps were
carousing was large and rudely furnished, containing
only—besides the permanent fixture of a bar
for the sale of liquors, which was partitioned off under
the staircase at one end of the room—a small
cherry-wood table and a few rush-bottomed chairs
as its customary moveables. Temporary arrangements
seemed, however, to have been lately made

for a greater number of guests than those would
accommodate. An oaken settle had been brought
from its place in the porch, and arranged, with several
hastily-constructed benches, around a rude substitute
for a dining-table, formed by nailing a pair
of shutters upon a stout log placed upright upon the
floor; the convenience being eked out in length by
some unplaned boards resting upon an empty cask
or two.

The rudeness of this primitive banqueting furniture
could hardly be said to be smoothed away
by a soiled and crumpled tablecloth which scantily
concealed less than half of its upper surface. It
appeared, however, to answer the purpose with the
bluff campaigners who were now seated around it,
filling beaker after beaker from a huge pewter flagon
which rapidly circulated around the board. Nor did
they, while making the most of these ungainly appliances
for their comfort, envy the burly and selfish
lounger who occupied and monopolized two or three
of the chairs, as well as the smaller and neater table
in one corner of the apartment. Of this privileged
and loutish individual we shall speak hereafter. A
heavy black patch covered one of his eyes; but the
curious glances which he with the other ever and
anon casts upon the carousing soldiery would intimate
that they are worthy of a more minute description
than we have yet given of them.

Their—stacked arms and knapsacks flung carelessly
in the corners might indicate that they are
only some fatigue party of militia that has stopped
here for refreshment; or it may be a detachment
from some larger body of light troops which has
halted for the night upon their march through the
country. The absence of all military etiquette, and
the free and equal tone of their intercourse, as they
sit all drinking at the same board, would imply that

they are only privates of some volunteer company
of foot. And yet, if his sabre and spurs were wanting,
there is still that in the appearance as well as
the equipments of more than one of their number
which would anywhere distinguish him from the
common soldier of a marching regiment, much less
from an ordinary militia-man. His looks are too
intelligent for those of a mere human machine, accustomed
only to act in mechanical unison with
others. His features are earnest, but not rigid.
His air is martial, but yet not strictly military.
It betrays the schooling of service rather than the
habit of discipline. It bespeaks the soldier, who
has been made such by circumstance rather than by
the drill sergeant. In a word, it is the air of a guerilla,
and not of a regular.

But listen; the partisan grows musical in his
cups. There is a grave pause in his wild wassail;
he has linked hands with his comrades; and now,
with one voice, they raise their battle hymn together.
It is that half-German gathering song which, in the
days of the Revolution, used to stir the Teuton blood
of “The old Residenters,” as the men of the Mohawk
called themselves.

OUR COUNTRY'S CALL.

The solitary lounger, who sat aloof from the soldiers,
exhibited every sign of boorish impatience
short of being directly offensive, as each new verse
followed the repetition of the chorus from the other
table. He was a strong-featured, bull-necked fellow,
whose slouched drab beaver, huge loaded whip,
and blanket-cloth overcoat indicated the occupation
of a teamster or drover. A pipe and pot of beer had
been placed before him while the soldiers were in
the midst of their song, with whose soothing luxury
he seemed not fully content, however, judging by
the growling impatience with which, ever and anon,
he now asked about some toasted cheese that it appeared
was preparing for him in the kitchen. His

remarks were addressed to mine host, a thin-faced,
lank-haired worthy, in a complete suit of black velveteen,
who stood behind the bar with slate in hand,
ready to make any addition to his reckoning at the
first call for replenishing the jorum of the soldiers;
and partly to a tight lass that glided to and fro
through the room, on the alert to receive the orders
of the company.

“Why, Tavy, gal,” said the drover, “I shall have
drank up all my ale before that cheese is forthcoming.
Your mammy ought to be able to toss up
such a trifle at five minutes' notice. I must ride
far to-night, and that right soon, to overtake my cattle,
which must be driven to Fort Dayton before
breakfast to-morrow. And here on moment—I
would tell you something, my pretty Tavy.”

“Octavia Sarah Ann,” cried a shrewish female
voice from the kitchen.

“Go, Tavy, my good girl, to your mother,” said
mine host, evidently uneasy to get the girl out of the
way of the cheese customer. “Your call shall be
obeyed in a moment, worthy sir; only have a little
patience. We are anything but strong-handed in
this house just now. My son Zachariah went off
with the Congress soldiers yesterday, and Scotch
Angus stole away to join the king's people last week.
The niggers are all sorting the horses that came in
to-night, and my good woman has no one to split a
stick for her till Zip comes in from the stable.”

“Well, Bully Nick, you might have spared all
that long palaver if you had left spry-tongued Tavy
to tell me the same thing in three words, instead of
squinting and blinking to her to clear out, as you did
just now. Hark ye, Nicholas, I would say a word
to you;” and the man, whose lawless features put
on a scowl, as if some angry thought had struck
him, beckoned to the innkeeper to approach near

enough for them to exchange a whisper together.
But this mark of confidence Wingear seemed sedulously
to avoid; and the traveller, at last rising
abruptly from his seat, strode up to the bar, and,
flinging down his reckoning, stalked out of the apartment;
not, however, before he had leaned over the
counter, and, catching the shrinking Nicholas by
the collar of his coat, muttered in his ear,

“I see you know me, worthy Nick! and, seeing
that you do, I've half a mind to slit your weasand
for fighting so shy of an old acquaintance. Schinos!
breathe but a syllable to this rebel gang, and
I'll roast you and your household among those rotten
timbers before morning. Remember! I have
an eye upon you, even among that batch of fools
yonder.”

“I say, deacon,” cried one of the Yægers, as the
innkeeper, stooping down behind the bar, as if busied
in arranging something, managed thus to conceal
the terror which this formidable speech had
inspired, “I say, deacon, my boy, who the devil's
that surly chap who's just left us?”

“That's more than I can tell you, Captain De
Roos,” replied Wingear, with difficulty mastering
the trepidation into which he had been thrown, and
still averting his face as he plied his towel industriously
along the shelves over which he leaned.
“The man's in the cattle business, I believe, sir,
as he talked of driving some critturs to Fort Dayton
for the troops there.”

The officer paused for a moment in mere idleness
of thought, as it seemed from the intentness
with which he watched the smoke-wreaths from his
mouth curling upward toward the rafters; and then
knocking the ashes from his segar, he resumed abruptly,
before replacing it in his lips,

“Did you ever see anything of Wolfert Valtmeyer
in these parts, Nicky?”

“Oh yes, sir,” answered Octavia, who that moment
entered with a fresh flagon from the cellar;
“he stopped here about harvest time two years ago
with Mr. Bradshawe, just as the troubles were beginning.
They went off in a hurry; folks said because
old Balt the hunter came down here to look
after their doings.”

“You are mistaken, Tavy,” said her father, uneasily;
“Bradshawe and the drover—and Valtmeyer
I mean—put down the pitcher, gal, and don't
stand gaping at me so. The drover and Brad—I
mean Wolfert—”

“You mean! and what the devil do you mean?”
said the soldier, turning round fiercely, and fixing a
stern eye upon the innkeeper. “Keep a straight
tongue between your teeth, Nick, or you may wish
it bitten off when too late.”

The abashed publican, quailing beneath the penetrating
glance of De Roos, was glad of any excuse
for remaining silent, while the other, addressing the
girl, thus pursued his inquiries:

“And so, my pretty Tavy, you saw Valtmeyer
about two years since, eh? About the time of
Greyslaer's fight, wasn't it?”

“Yes, sir, either just before or just after Brant
carried off Miss Alida.”

The features of the gay soldier darkened as she
spoke; but, quickly resuming his air of unconcern,
he continued his questions by asking,

“What kind of a looking fellow was Wolfert
then? Did he bear any resemblance to the drover
that was here but now?”

“He was about as tall as the drover, sir, but not
so fleshy. When the drover had his back turned I
almost mistrusted it was Mr. Valtmeyer; but then

the drover was much younger and rounder-faced, and,
in spite of the black patch over his eye, altogether
more likely looking than Mr. Valtmeyer, who looked
mighty homely with his great sprangly beard, he
did;” and the girl smoothed down her apron, and
cast a glance over her shoulder at a bit of looking-glass
stuck against a post of the bar, as if she questioned
the taste of the unshorn Wolfert in having,
by his toilet, shown such indifference to her charms.

“He was thinner, and wore a long beard, eh? a
razor and good quarters would easily make all the
difference,” soliloquized De Roos. “But the impudent
scoundrel would scarcely dare thus to put his
head in the lion's mouth. Yet I must have an eye to
the puritanical curmudgeon that this simple lass has
the courtesy to call father.” And then resuming
aloud, he added, “Did your, father ever know—”

“Octavia Sarah Ann,” interrupted the shrill voice
from the kitchen.

“Curse the beldam!” muttered De Roos, as the
nuisance was instantly repeated.

“Octavia Sarah Ann, come take this toasted
cheese to the cattle merchant.”

“Yes, mother, yes, I'm coming! Had you any
more questions to ask me, captain?”

“Go, gal, go,” growled old Wingear, in a low
voice. “You are too fond, young missus, of keeping
here among the sogers.”

“Any more questions? no—stay one moment,
sweet Tavy, my blooming Tavy. Where got you
those gay ribands which lace that bodice so charmingly?”

“Law, sir,” replied the girl, bashfully retiring a
step or two as the gallant soldier stretched out his
hand as if to draw her near and examine the trim
of her tasteful little figure more curiously; “law,
sir, it's only the blue and buff, the Congress colours,

you know, that old Balt brought me, with other fixings,
from Schenectady.”

“Octavia Sarah Ann, if ye're not here in the
peeling of an inion, 'twill be the worse for you,”
screamed the virago mother.

“You see, captain, I must go.”

“Zounds! what a tight ankle the girl has, too,”
quoth the captain, as she tripped out of the apartment.
“And so that queer quiz, old Balt, has induced her
to mount the patriot colours! Well, I hope a finer
riband will not induce her to change them for the
blue and silver of `The Royal New-Yorkers,' as
Johnson's motley gang call themselves. For `Bold
and true, in buff and blue, &c.;”' and the mercurial
ranger strolled off to the stables, humming some
verses of an old song, which was quickly taken up
and echoed by his comrades.

“There he goes—God bless him—singing for all
the world like a Bob-a-linkum on the wing—a crittur

whose very natur it is not to keep still for a moment,
and to make music wherever he moves.”

“And what mare's nest has our singing bird
found now, corporal?”

“Well, I don't know, sargeant; only, if the captain
has got upon the trail of Wild Wolfert, as his
words belikened, it would be a tall thing for us boys
to seize that limb o' Satan, and carry him along
with us to German Flats.”

“Ay, ay, it would indeed; but though our scouts
would make us believe that both he and Bradshawe
are snooping about the country among the Tories,
I rather guess that they are both snug in St. Leger's
lines before Fort Stanwix.”

“No doubt, no doubt,” said a trooper, rapping an
empty flagon with the hilt of his sabre, as if tired
of the discussion of so dry a subject. “Butler
could never spare such an officer as Bradshawe at
such a time as this.”

“Yes,” rejoined another; “and if he were really
skulking about among the Tories, the hawk-eyed
Willett must have lighted upon him while screwing
his way through such a ticklish region to come
down and alarm the lower country as he did.”

“Come, lieutenant,” cried one who had not yet
spoken, “give us another song; and be it a merry
or droll one, if it suits you; this is the last night
we are to mess together like gentlemen volunteers.
To-morrow we shall be mustered with the old Continentals,
and then the cursed etiquette of army discipline
puts an end to all fun among us. It takes
Captain Dirk a whole campaign to thaw out into a
clever fellow after passing a week with his company
in the regular lines; and as for you, Tom Wiley,
who've sat the whole evening—”

“Spare me, worthy Hans; I hate to find myself
under the command of a Congress officer as much

as you do, only you know that, for the honour of the
corps, we Yægers should keep up the observances
of military rank when acting with the government
forces.”

“That's a fact, boys,” said the corporal. “What!
would you have our free companies confounded with
the common-draughted milishy, and laughed at by all
the Continentals as they be? No, no; I may wince
as much as any on ye when I feel the screws o' discipline
first beginning to set tight, but I like to see
our captain take airs upon himself with the best on
'em when it's for the honour of the corps. There
now's the Refugee partisans that fight on their own
hook just like ourselves—Johnson's Greens and
Butler's Rangers, Tories though they be—toe the
mark like real sodgers upon a call of duty. Oh,
you should have been in Greyslaer's company to
see discipline, and that, too, jist when the war was
breaking out; only ask Cornet Kit Lansingh, when
the poor boy comes safe to hand again from that
wild tramp of hisn! As sure as my name's Adam
Miller, if Major Max ever comes back from the
South—”

“It will be to haunt you, Adam, for prosing about
these gloomy byergones instead of drinking your liquor.
Major Greyslaer has been dead these six
months, and his ghost ought to be laid by this time.
As for poor Cornet Kit, the only service we can
render him is to drink his memory all standing.”

“Don't tell me that,” said the corporal, his face
reddening with indignation. “You can't riley me
about the major, Tom Wiley; for, though folks
would make out that he fell at Fort Moultrie, I
knows what I knows about him! As for Kit Lansingh,
you needn't waste liquor by drinking to his
memory yet a while; for hasn't old Balt got scent
of him clean off in the Genesee country? and aint

he upon his living trail by this time with the friendly
Mohegan that I myself heerd tell about having seen
Kit with his own eyes among the Oneidas last winter?”

“What, Balt try to carry his scalp safely through
the Seneca nation, not to mention the Onondagoes
and Cayugas, through all of which he'll have to run
the gauntlet before reaching the Genesee? Pshaw,
man, the old hunter is as cold as my spurs long before
this.”

Though the reckless trooper spoke thus only for
the sake of teasing his comrade, yet the partisan
corporal was familiar enough with the dangers of
the wilderness not to fear that what Wiley said
was true. But, as if to shake off the ungrateful
conviction, he emptied his beaker at a draught,
shook his head, and was silent, while another of the
Yægers changed the subject by saying,

“Well, well, let's have Wiley's song. Come, Wiley,
if it must be the last time we have a bout of
free and equal fellowship like this together, just tune
up something we can all join in.”

The vocalist began to clear his throat, filled a
bumper, threw himself back in his chair, and had
got more than half through the usual preliminaries
with which most pretenders to connoiseurship chill
and deaden the impulsive flow of festive feeling
(in instantaneous sympathy with which their song
should burst forth if they mean to sing at all), when
he was suddenly superseded in his vocation.

“Tavy, my light lass! Tavy, my border blossom!”
cried the gay voice of De Roos without; and
then, as entering the room from one door, while the
girl peeped shyly in from the other, “Come hither
—hither, my flowering graft of a thorny crab; come
hither, my peeping fawn, and learn news of the kind
old forester who has always played the godfather to

you. They have succeeded, boys. Kit Lansingh
lives and thrives. Here's a messenger from Fort
Dayton, bringing the news from Balt himself, now
at that post. Carry on, carry on, and tell us your
tidings; but hold, the poor fellow's athirst, perhaps.
Wash the dust from his mouth with a cup
of apple-jack, Adam, and then he'll speak.”

The countryman, who, entering the room at the
heels of De Roos, had cast a wistful eye upon the
table from the first, advanced without saying a word,
and tossed off the liquor which the corporal filled
out for him, smacked his lips, wiped his mouth with
his coat-sleeve, and thus delivered himself:

“All I have to say, gentlemen, is nothing more
or less than what I was telling the capting here when
he broke away from me like mad at the stable-door;
where, who should I first happen upon but the capting
when I went to put up my pony, before looking
round for him here. `Is there anything astir
among the people?' says the capting, says he, when
I delivered him that note from Colonel Weston
which he holds in his hand, and which, if I don't
make too bold, is an order—”

“Yes, yes, an order for me to move forward tonight.
Carry on, man, carry on with your story,”
cried the impatient De Roos.

“Well, as I was saying, `Is there anything astir?'
says the capting, says he. `Why, to be sure there
is,' says I; `and a mighty pretty stir it is, too,' says
I. `Hasn't old Balt got back from his wild tramp,
and doesn't he bring the best of news for us in times
as ticklish as these? I guess he does, though,' says
I. `There's the young chief Teondetha and a white
man he rescued from the Cayugas, and took home
among his people for safety, are coming down to
help the country, with three hundred Oneida rifles
at their backs,' says I; `and didn't they send Balt

a short cut ahead to warn our people not to move
upon Fort Stanwix until they could have time to
crawl safely round the enemy and join old Herkimer
at the German Flats? To be sure they did,'
says I; and then the capting what does he do but,
instead of hearing me out, he ups at once and asks
me the name of the white man as furiously as if it was
for dear life he spoke; and when I told him it was
Mr. Christian Lansingh, the likely young nephew of
old Balt, he tore away from me as if I had the
plague; and I—I ups and follows at once to see the
end of his doings; and there, now, gentlemen, you
have the hull history o' the matter, so I'll jist put
another drop o' liquor in this glass and drink sarvice
to all on ye, not forgetting that right snug young
woman, whose colour has been coming and going
like all natur while I told my story—meaning no
offence whatever, miss.”

“Offence to Tavy, my lad! no one suspects you
of that. There are mettlesome chaps enough here
to take care of her,” said a soldier.

“Ay,” echoed another, “she has a brother in
every man in the troop.”

“And she shall choose a husband among the best
of ye, when the wars are over,” cried De Roos.
“But carry on, men, carry on; we must sound for
the saddle in twenty minutes; and, unless you would
leave your liquor undrunk, carry on, carry on.”

“Ay, ay, fill round for our last toast,” said the
sergeant, rising; “war and woman—wassail we've
had enough of to-night—war and woman—the myrtle
and steel.”

“The myrtle and steel,” echoed a dozen voices.
“Your song, your song now, Wiley.”

“War and woman—the myrtle and steel,” shouted
De Roos; and then, before the twice-foiled lieutenant
could collect his wits for the occasion, the

spirit of the wild partisan broke forth in the song
with which we close this record of the rangers'
revels.

2. CHAPTER II.
THE SOLDIER'S RETURN.

Holmes.

It was a summer's evening, when Max Greyslaer,
returning, after a long absence, to his native valley,
left his tired horse at the adjacent hamlet, and hurried
off on foot to present himself at the Hawksnest.
The sun of a fiercer climate, not less than the unhealthy
swamps of the South, had stolen the freshness
from his cheek; and the arduous campaign in
which he had lately signalized himself, had left
more than one impress of its perils upon his manly
front. But the heart of the young soldier was not
less buoyant within him because conscious that the
comeliness of youth had passed away from his scarred
and sallow features. He had learned, before
reaching its neighbourhood, that the beloved inmate
of the homestead was well; and, breathing
again the health-laden airs of his native north, he
felt an elasticity of feeling and motion such as he
had not known in many a long month before. The
stern realities of life which he had beheld, not less
than the active duties in which he had shared, had
long since changed Max Greyslaer from a dreaming
student into a practical-minded, energetic man; but
his whole moral temperament must have been altered

completely, if the scene which now lay around,
and the circumstances under which he beheld it,
had not called back some of the thoughtful musings
of earlier days.

The atmosphere, while slowly fading into the
gray of evening, was still rich in that golden hue
which dyes our harvest landscape. The twilight
shadows lay broad and still upon the river which
glided tranquilly between its overhanging thickets;
but, while those on the farther side were purpled
with the light of evening, the warm hues of lingering
sunset still played upon the canopy of wild vines
which imbowered those that were nearer, touching
here and there the top of a tall elm with a still ruddier
glow, and bathing the stubble-field on some distant
hill in a flood of yellow light. But, lovely and
peaceful as seemed the scene, there was something
of sadness in the deep silence which hung over it.
The whistle of the ploughboy, the shout of the
herdsman, the voices of home-returning boors loitering
by the roadside to chat for a moment together
when their harvest-day's work was over—
none of these rustic sounds were there. The near
approach of invasion had summoned the defenders
of the soil away from their native fields, and the region
around was almost denuded of its male inhabitants;
infirm age or tender youth alone remaining
around the hearths they were too feeble to protect.
The deep bay of a house-dog was the first thing
that reminded Greyslaer that some sentinels at least
were not wanting to watch over their masterless
homesteads.

The young officer, fresh from the animated turmoil
of a camp-life, had ridden all day along highways
bustling with the march of yeomanry corps,
crowding into the main route from a hundred farm-roads
and by-paths, all hastening toward the border,

and the air of desertion in the present scene could
not but strike him by the contrast. It was with a
heart less light and a step less free than they were an
hour before that he now wended his way among the
shrubbery in approaching the door of the Hawksnest.
The sound of music came from an open
window in the wing which was nearest to him, and
his heart thrilled in recognition of the voice of the
singer as he paused to listen to a mournful air
which was singularly in unison with his feelings at
the moment. The words, which were Greyslaer's
own, had, indeed, no allusion to his own story, but
they had been thrown off in one of those melancholy
moods when the imprisoned spirit of sadness will
borrow any guise from fancy to steal out from the
heart; and coming from the lips they did, they were
now not less apposite to the passing tone of his
mind than in the moment they were written.

The song had ceased, but Greyslaer, before it finished,
had approached near enough to hear the sigh

with which it ended; for how much of the past did
not that single sigh repay him, even if his long account
of affection had not been already balanced by
the true heart that breathed it! In another moment
Alida is folded to his bosom.

“My own Alida was hard to win, but most truly
does she wear. Do I not know who was in your
thoughts, beloved, in the moment that my rustling
footsteps made you rush to the verandah to greet
me?”

“I heard not your footsteps, I felt your presence,
dearest Max; yet was I strangely sad in the instant
before you came.”

“And I, too, Alida, was sad, I scarce know why,
save from that mysterious sympathy of soul with
soul you have almost taught me to believe in. But
now—”

“Now I know there should be no place for gloom;
yet why, Max, should melancholy thoughts in the
heart of either herald a moment of so much joy to
both?”

Max, who had often playfully philosophized with
her upon the tinge of superstition with which the
highly imaginative mind of Alida was imbued, now
attempted to smile away her apprehensive forebodings.
But as she knew, in anticipation, that he
was on his way to the seat of war, and could only
have snatched this brief interview in passing to the
post of peril, the task of cheering her spirits was a
difficult one.

“Not,” said she, rising and pacing the room,
while her tall figure and noble air seemed to gather
a still more queenly expression from the feelings
which agitated her, “not that I would have the idle
fears of a weak woman dwell one moment among
your cares—for your mind, Max, must be free even

of the thought of me when you go where men are
matched in war or counsel against each other—but
something whispers that this meeting, that this parting
is—is what your own words, which I sung but
now, may in spirit be prophetic of.”

“Nay, nay, Alida,” said Max, smiling, “that foolish
song has already more than answered its purpose
in serving to while away a lonely moment of
yours, and I protest against my rhymes being perverted
to such dismal uses. You may change your
true knight into a faithful troubadour or humble minstrel
of your household, if you will; but I protest
against your making him play the musty part of old
`Thomas the Rhymer,' merely because he has once
or twice offended by stringing verses together.”

“Why will you always jest so when I feel gravest?”
said Alida, half reproachfully, as she placed
her hand in that which gently drew her back to the
seat which she had left by Greyslaer's side.

“It is gravity of mood, and not of thought, dearest,
that I would fain banter away; for surely my
Alida would not call these vain and idle fancies
thoughts? Why should I deal daintily with things
so troublous of her peace? Out upon them all, I
say. The future has no cloud for us, save that
which will continue to hover over thousands till
peace return to the land; why should we study to
appropriate more than our proper share of the general
gloom? As for this Barry St. Leger,” said
Max, with increasing animation, “St. Leger is a
clever fellow to have pushed his brigand crew thus
far into the country; but gallant Gansevoort still
holds him stoutly at bay, and if Hermiker and his
militia fail to bring him to a successful account, we
have fiery Arnold and his Continentals already on
the march to beat up his quarters and drive the Tories
back to Canada.”

As the young soldier spoke, Alida caught a momentary
confidence not less from the tone of his
voice than from the look of his eye. The proud
affection with which she now gazed upon the manly
mien of her lover seemed more akin to her natural
character than did the anxiety of feeling which
again resumed its influence in her bosom; an anxiety
which continually, throughout the evening, sent
a shade of sadness to her features, and which Greyslaer,
remembering in long months afterward, had
but too much reason to think proceeded from one of
those unaccountable presentiments of approaching
evil which all have at some time known.

Since the memorable night when Greyslaer's
providential discovery of the real position in which
Alida stood toward Bradshawe had won from her
the first avowal of her regard, this painful subject
had been rarely alluded to by either; nor, closely as
it mingled with the story of their loves, will it seem
strange that a matter so delicate should be avoided
by both in an interview like the present.

The joy of their first meeting had banished it alike
from the hearts of either; and Alida, as the painful
moment of parting grew nigh, could not bring herself
to add to present sorrows by recalling those
which seemed all but passed away entirely, though
their memory still existed as a latent cause of disquiet
to herself. As for Max, his spirits seemed to
have imbibed so much vigour and elasticity from
the stirring life he had lately led, that it was almost
impossible for Alida not to catch a share of the confidence
which animated him. But though the state
of the times and the duties which called Greyslaer
to the field, and which might still for a long period
defer their union, seemed, as they conversed together,
the only difficulties that obstructed their mutual
path to happiness, there was in the heart of Alida

a vague apprehension of impediments yet undreamed
of and far less easy to be surmounted.

The moments of their brief converse were sweet,
deliciously sweet to either; but the banquet of feeling
was to Alida like the maiden's feast of the Iroquois
legend. Her bosom was the haunted lodge,
where ever and anon a dim phantom flitted around
the board, and withered, with his shadow, the fruits
and flowers which graced it.

In the mean time there was one little circumstance,
which, calling up a degree of thoughtfulness,
if not of pain, in the mind of Greyslaer, would alone
have impaired the full luxury of the present hour.
Some household concerns had called Alida for a few
minutes from the room in which they were sitting,
and Max, to amuse himself in her absence, turned
over a portfolio of her drawings which chanced to
be lying upon a table near. The sketches were
chiefly landscape views of the neighbouring scenery
of the Mohawk, which is so rich in subjects for the
pencil; but there were several studies of the head
of a child interspersed among the rest, which, after
the recurrence of the same features sketched again
and again with more or less freedom and lightness,
finally arrested the earnest gaze of Max as he viewed
them at last in a finished drawing, which was
evidently intended for a portrait. He felt certain
that he had seen the face of that young boy before,
yet when or where it was impossible for him to remember.
There was an Indian cast in the physiognomy,
which for a moment made him conceive that
it must have been during his captivity among the
Mohawks that he had seen the child. Yet, though
a close observer of faces, he could recall no such
head among the bright-eyed urchins he had often
seen at play around his wigwam.

“I am puzzling myself, Alida,” said he, as Miss

De Roos returned to the room, “to remember where
it is that I have seen the original of this portrait;
for certain it is, the style of the features, if not the
whole head, is perfectly familiar to me;” and Max,
shading the picture partly with his hand, looked up
for a moment as Alida approached him while speaking.
“Good heavens!” he added, in a tone of surprise,
“how much it resembles yourself as the light
now falls on your countenance.”

“Do you think so?” cried Alida; “that is certainly
very odd, for I have always thought that poor
little Guise bore a wonderful resemblance to my
brother Derrick, notwithstanding his straight black
Indian locks are so different from Dirk's bright
curls. Your remark confirms the truth of the likeness
I discovered between them; for Derrick and
I, you know, were always thought to resemble each
other.”

“And who, if I may ask,” rejoined Greyslaer,
gravely, “is this `poor little Guise,' who is so familiar
a subject of interest to you?”

“Oh! I should have told you before of our little
protegé, but my thoughts have been so hurried tonight,”
replied Alida, blushing. “You must know,
then, that Derrick takes a vast interest in this forlorn
little captive, who is neither more nor less than
a grandson of Joseph Brant, that was left behind in
an Indian foray when Derrick's band had driven
back or dispersed his natural protectors.”

“What, a child like that accompany an expedition
of warriors across the border! a child of Isaac
Brant, too; for he, I believe, is the only married son
of the chief! Who gave you this account, Alida?”

“Dear Max, you look grave as well as incredulous.
I tell you only what Derrick imparted to
me when he brought that friendless boy hither,
and begged me to assume the charge of him for a

short season. I conjured my brother to return him
to his people, but he would not hear of it. He only
answered that, as the boy was an orphan whose
mother had perished in the fray in which her child
was taken, and whose father was off fighting on another
part of the frontier, it was a mercy to keep
him here. I saw Derrick for scarcely an hour at
the time he made the request. He came galloping
across the lawn with the child on the pommel of
his saddle before him; scarcely entered the house,
except to exchange a joke or two with the old servants
who crowded around him; took Guise with
him to the stable to look at the horses, and then
hurried off to join his troop, which, he said, had
made a brief halt while passing through the country
toward Lake George.”

“And has he given you no farther particulars
since?”

“Not a word. He has written once or twice,
inquiring how I liked his dusky pet, as he calls him;
but he says not a word of his ultimate intentions in
regard to him. It was only the other day that, in
marching through from the Upper Hudson toward
Fort Stanwix, he paid me a visit; but he stopped
only to breakfast, and came as suddenly and disappeared
almost as quickly as before; and though he
caressed and fondled the child while here, yet, when
I attempted to hold some sober talk with him about
his charge, he only ran on in his old rattling manner,
and said there was time enough to think of this
when the St. Leger business was over.”

“Can I see the child?” said Greyslaer, with difficulty
suppressing an exclamation of impatience at
the levity of his friend.

“He sleeps now, dear Max. He has been ill
to-day, and when I left the room it was only to see

whether or not the restlessness of my little patient
had subsided into slumber.”

“Does this picture bear a close resemblance to
his features?” rejoined Max, taking up the drawing
once more from the table.

“I cannot say that; yet I have tried so often, for
my amusement, to take them, that I ought at least
to have partially succeeded in my last effort. The
wild, winning little creature is so incessantly in motion,
though, that a far more skilful hand than mine
might be foiled in the undertaking. But, Max, if
you really feel such a curiosity about my charge, I
must show him to you; wait but an instant till I
return.”

Alida, taking one of the lights from the table as
she glided out of the room, reappeared with it, a
moment afterward, in her hand. “Tread lightly
now,” she said, “while following me, for he still
sleeps most sweetly, and I would not have him disturbed
for the world.”

Greyslaer, who seemed to be actuated by some
more serious motive than mere curiosity for holding
this inquisition over the sleeping urchin, followed
her steps without speaking. Alida, entering
the dressing-room—into which, as the reader may
remember, the eyes of her lover had once before
penetrated—made a quick step or two in advance,
and closed the door leading into the chamber beyond;
then turning round, she pointed to a little cotbedstead,
which seemed to have been temporarily
placed there for greater convenience in attending
upon her patient.

Max took the candle from her hand, and, shading
the eyes of the infant sleeper with his broad-leaved
beaver, bent over, as if in close scrutiny of its placid
features; while Alida, touched by the sympathizing
interest which her lover displayed in her

charge, and dreaming not of the cause which
prompted that interest, gazed on with a countenance
beaming with sensibility. At first the deep sleep
in which the child was plunged left nothing but the
lovely air of infantile repose in its expression; but—
whether from being stirred inwardly by dreams, or
disturbed by the light which penetrated its fringed
lids from without, or touched, perhaps, by the drooping
plume with which the soldier shaded its brow—
it soon began to move, to gripe the coverlet in its
tiny fingers, and, turning over petulantly even in its
slumbers, to work its features into something more
of meaning.

It was a child of the most tender years; but,
though scarcely four summers could have passed
over its innocent head, the lineaments of another,
less pure than it, were strongly charactered in its
face. Something there was of Alida there, but far
more of her wild and almost lawless brother. There
seemed, indeed, what might be called a strong family
resemblance to them both; but while the darker
hue of Alida's hair might have aided in first recalling
her image to him who gazed upon the sable
locks of the Indian child, yet her noble brow was
wanting beneath them; and the mouth, which earliest
shows the natural temper, and which most nearly
expresses the habitual passions at maturity—the
mouth was wholly that of her wayward and reckless
brother. The features were so decidedly European,
that the tawny skin and the eyes, which were
closed from Greyslaer's view, were all he thought
that could proclaim an Indian origin for this true
scion of the Mohawk chieftain's line, as Derrick had
represented him to his sister.

“It is the mysterious instinct of blood, then, as
well as the natural promptings of her sex's kindness,
which has elicited Alida's sympathy for this

wild offshoot of her house. But she should have a
more considerate protector than this giddy brother,
who, even in assuming the most sacred responsibility,
must needs risk mixing up a sister's name with
his own wild doings.”

“You do not tell me what you think of my protegé,”
said Alida, as Greyslaer, musing thus, was
silent for a moment or two after they returned to
the sitting-room. “I declare your indifference quite
piques me. You have no idea of the interest poor
forlorn little Guise excited when I took him with me
to Albany on my last visit to our family friends
there.”

Max had it upon his tongue to ask her in reply
if she thought that the child bore any resemblance
to Isaac Brant, its reputed father, whom Alida must
have seen in former years; but, at once remembering
how closely that individual was connected with
Bradshawe's misdeeds, he stifled the question, and,
passing by her last observation as lightly as possible,
changed the subject altogether. The whole
matter, however, left somehow a disagreeable impression
with him, and he was provoked at the importance
it assumed in his thoughts, when, after the
thrilling emotions of a lover's parting had passed
away, it recurred again and again to his mind during
his long walk back to the inn where he was to
pass the night.

The dawn of the next morning found Greyslaer
again upon the road toward Fort Dayton, where a
pleasurable meeting with more than one old comrade
awaited him, and where a military duty devolved
upon him which, slight in character as it at
first appeared, was destined, in its fulfilment, to
have a most serious bearing upon his own happiness
and that of Alida.

3. CHAPTER III.
THE CONSPIRATORS.

—Dawes.

The reader has perhaps gathered, from the interview
between Greyslaer and Alida last described,
that the characters of both have undergone no
slight change since the period when they were first
introduced into our story: that Max, as the successful
wooer and the travelled soldier who had seen
the world, is now a somewhat different being from
the visionary student, the fond-dreaming and willow-wearing
lover, whose romantic musings have
heretofore, perhaps, called out, at times, a pitying
smile from the reader: that Alida, the once haughty
empress of his heart, whose pride, though utterly
removed from ordinary selfishness, had still a species
of self-idolatry as its basis, had been not less
affected in her disposition by the softening influences
of love and sorrow, and that patient realization
of hope-deferred which tameth alike the heart of
man or woman. Yet these changes are merely
those which time and circumstance will work in all
of us, and Max and Alida are still the same in every
essential of character.

The change in Greyslaer is one that all men

more or less undergo as the sobering influence of
riper years steals over them, and their minds are
brought more in contact with the practical things of
life; when, having tested their powers in the world
of action, the frame of the mind becomes, as it were,
more closely knit and sinewy, and seeks objects to
grapple with more substantial than the shadowy
creations of the ideal world in which erst they
dwelt. Now, while the success which had hitherto
crowned the early career of Max Greyslaer alike in
love and arms, is one of the most active elements
in rapidly effecting this change from wild, visionary
youth, to dignified, consummate manhood, the emotions
and cares of Alida were precisely those which
would dash the Amazonian spirit and humble the
arrogance of self-sustainment in a proud and beautiful
woman, once the petted inmate of a bright and
happy home, and intrenched in all the advantages
that family and station could confer.

The half-insane idea of righting in person the
wrongs which she had received at the hands of
Bradshawe, had been long since dispelled by the
realization of more irremediable sorrows in the
death of her nearest relations; and as her woman's
heart awoke for the first time to the graces of woman's
tenderness, and her spirit grew more and more
feminine as it learned to lean upon another, she
even shuddered at remembering the strange fantasy
of revenge that was the darling dream of her girlhood.
It is true, that in the hour of her betrothal
to Greyslaer she had listened with the kindling delight
of some stern heroine of romantic story to the
deep-breathed vengeance of her lover against the
man who had plotted her ruin. But as time wore
on, and the fulfilment of the vow grew less probable
from the prolonged exile of Bradshawe, which might
ultimately result in total banishment from his native

land; and as Max, who was soon afterward called
away by his military duties to a distant region,
grew more and more dear to her in absence, she
gradually learned to shrink as painfully from the
idea of a deadly personal encounter between him
and Bradshawe, as she lately had from her own unfeminine
dream of vengeance.

Nor had the views of Greyslaer, though affected
by different causes from those which swayed Alida,
altered less in this respect. Max, though his well-ordered
mind was in the main governed by high
religious principle, was certainly not in advance of
those opinions of his day which held a fairly-fought
duel as no very serious offence against Heaven; and
indeed he had betrayed, upon more than one occasion,
while serving with the hot-headed spirits of the
South, that no scruple of early education interfered
to prevent him from calling an offender to account
after the most punctilious fashion of the times.
But, since he had mingled more among men of the
world, he had learned enough of its customs to know
that Bradshawe was rather a subject for the punishment
of the criminal laws than for the chastisement
of a gentleman's sword; and that, while wiping away
an insult with blood was a venial offence according
to the fantastic code to which, as a military man,
he was now subject, to spill the same blood in cutting
off a felon was unofficer-like in deed, as it was
unchristian-like in spirit to thirst after it. These
sentiments, which his camp associations had gradually,
and, almost unknowingly to himself, infused
into the young soldier, were more than redeemed
from trivial-mindedness by those more extended
views of action which, growing up at the same time
with them, merged the recollection of personal
grievances in the public wrongs, to whose redress
his sword was already devoted.

The scenes he was now about revisiting served
to recall the distempered counsels of former times;
when, after his betrothal to Alida, he had meditated
throwing up his commission, and dogging Bradshawe
with the footsteps of an avenger until the
death of one of them were wrought; and when his
being ordered unexpectedly upon dangerous duty
to a remote district happily interposed the point of
honour as a stay to such mad procedure. But these
scenes, with their attendant associations, revived
no feeling in Max's bosom nearer akin to personal
hostility toward Bradshawe than any earnest and
honest mind might entertain toward a low-lived and
desperate adventurer, whose mischievous career
would be shortened with benefit to the community.
If, then, either the fortune of war or a higher Providence
should seem at any time to single out him
as the appointed instrument of Bradshawe's punishment,
let it bring no reproach to the chivalrous nature
of Greyslaer if he should fulfil his stern office
with the methodical coldness of the mere soldier.

The order which Captain De Roos had received
to hurry forward with his comrades was prompted
by intelligence which had been received at Fort
Dayton of a secret movement among the disaffected
in the neighbourhood. The rapid advance of Barry
St. Leger into the Valley of the Mohawk, together
with his formidable investure of Fort Stanwix, while
far and wide it called out the valour and activity of
the patriots to resist the invasion, was viewed with
very opposite feelings by the remains of the royalist
party which were still scattered here and there
throughout Tryon county. These disaffected families,
taught, by the events which followed Schuyler's
march upon Johnstown in the earlier days of
the war, that their lives were held by rather a precarious
tenure, and that both their property and

their personal safety depended upon their abstaining
from all political agitation, hesitated long to venture
upon any new overt acts of treason.

The Johnsons and their refugee adherents, however,
had not, in the mean time, been idle in scattering
the proclamations of the British ministry, and
attempting, by every means in their power, to keep
up an intimate connexion with their political friends
who were within the American lines. The Provincial
government was fully aware of the existence of
these intrigues, which were so daringly set on foot
and indefatigably followed up by the Tories; and
a military force, consisting of the first New-York
regiment and other troops, had at an early day been
posted at Fort Dayton on the Mohawk, in order to
overawe the loyalists and prevent any sudden rising
among them.

So bold a Tory as Walter Bradshawe, however,
was not to be paralyzed in his plans by such impediments
to their success. His emissary, Valtmeyer,
whom we have already recognised under his disguise
at the roadside inn, had appeared among his
old haunts on the very day that St. Leger sat down
before Fort Stanwix; and, by the aid of letters and
vouchers both from Bradshawe and his superiors,
had successfully busied himself in leaguing the
Tories together for sudden and concerted action.
But, before openly committing themselves in arms,
it was deemed necessary that a meeting should be
held at the house of one of their number for the purposes
of general consultation.

Within a few miles of Fort Dayton resided a Mr.
Schoonmacker, a disaffected gentleman, who, previously
to the breaking out of the war, had been in
his majesty's commission of the peace. This individual,
a man of extensive means and influential
connexions, had of late exerted himself effectually

in rekindling the spirits and hopes of his party in
the neighbourhood. The address with which he
managed his intrigues for a long time preserved
him from all suspicion of taking an active part in
the affairs of the times, though his political tenets
were well known in the country round. Grown
rash by long impunity, however, or rather, perhaps,
incited by the blustering proclamations with which
St. Leger flooded the country to give confidence to
the king's friends, Schoonmacker now ventured to
commit himself completely by offering his house
for the accommodation of the clandestine meeting.
His generous zeal was warmly praised by the loyalists,
already in arms under St. Leger; and their
commander promised that an officer of the crown
should be present at the assemblage to represent
his own views, and aid and encourage Schoonmacker's
friends in their undertaking. Walter Bradshawe,
who was now in command of one of the
companies of refugees enrolled with the forces that
beleaguered Fort Stanwix, eagerly voluntered upon
this perilous agency, stipulating only that a small
detachment should accompany him to the place of
rendezvous—in order to cut his way back to the
besieging army in case the projected rising should
prove a failure.

Taking with him a dozen soldiers and the like
number of Indians, the Tory captain withdrew from
the lines of Fort Stanwix and approached the rendezvous
of the conspirators upon the appointed
evening. His white followers, though they had
been mustered in St. Leger's army as regular soldiers,
consisted chiefly of those wild border characters
who, throughout the war, seem to have fought
indifferently upon either side, as the hope of booty
or the dictates of private vengeance prompted them
to adopt a part in the quarrel. One of these last,

a man whose powerful frame seemed of yet more
gigantic proportions, clad as he was in the loose
hunting-shirt of the border, and armed to the teeth
with knife and tomahawk, two brace of pistols, and
a double-barrelled fusee, presented the appearance
of a walking armory as he strode along in earnest
conversation with his leader.

“Well, Valtmeyer,” said Bradshawe, as they approached
their destination, “I do not order you
upon this duty, which I think one of my light-armed
Indians could perform better, perhaps, than yourself;
but, if you choose to reconnoitre the fort
while we are engaged in counsel, you have full liberty
to do so, only—”

But, before he could add the precautions he
was about to utter, Valtmeyer, simply exclaiming
“Enough!” turned shortly into an adjacent thicket,
where the sound of his footsteps upon the rustling
leaves was soon lost to the ear of his officer.

Though the hour was late, yet the party collected
at Schoonmacker's were still seated at table when
Bradshawe, having stationed his sentries, prepared
to join them. The carousing royalists had evidently
drunk deep during the evening. The health
of “The King” was pledged again and again; and
their favourite toast of “Confusion to the Rebels”
was floating upon a bumper near each one's lips
when Bradshawe entered the apartment.

“You are loud in your mirth, gentlemen,” cried
the Tory officer, returning their vociferous greeting
with some sternness, and impatiently waving from
him the glass that was eagerly proffered by more
than one of the conspirators. “Do I see all of our
friends, Mr. Schoonmacker, or have these loyal gentlemen
brought some retainers with them?” added
Bradshawe, with more blandness, bowing at the
same time politely to three or four of the company,

as he recognised them individually either as influential
characters well known in the county, or as
old personal acquaintances of his own. “I was told,
Major MacDonald,” continued he, turning to a noble-looking,
gray-headed man of fifty, “I was told
that you, at least, could bring some twenty-five or
thirty of your friends and dependants to strengthen
our battalion of Royal Rangers.”

“Twenty-six, sir, is the number of followers
which I have promised to add to the royal levies;
but, in lending my poor means to aid the cause of the
king, I was not aware that my recruits were to be
mustered under the command of a stranger; nor
did I understand from General St. Leger that we
were to serve in the Rangers. There are certain
forms, young sir, to be observed in such proceedings
as those in which we are engaged; and it may be
well for you to produce certain missives, with which
you are doubtless furnished, before we proceed directly
to business.”

Bradshawe—who, by-the-by, was hardly of an
age to be addressed as “young sir” without some offence
to his dignity—bit his lip while observing the
coolness with which the worthy major knocked the
ashes from his segar while tranquilly thus delivering
himself. He, however, repressed the insolent language
which rose to his lips in reply, and, placing
his hand in his bosom, contented himself with flinging
contemptuously upon the table a bundle of papers
which he drew forth, exclaiming, at the same
time,

“You will find there my warrant, gentlemen, for
busying myself in these matters.”

As he spoke he threw himself into a chair and
poured out a glass of wine, with whose hue and flavour
he tried to occupy his attention for the moment;
but he could not conceal that he was somewhat nettled

by the coolness with which the veteran turned
over and examined the documents one after another,
passing the captain's commission of Bradshawe,
with the other papers, successively to those who sat
near him. Bradshawe moved uneasily in his chair
as this examination, which seemed to be needlessly
minute and protracted, was going forward; and it
is impossible to say what might have been the result
of so severely testing the patience of his restless
and overbearing mind, if the phlegmatic investigation
of the worthy major had not been interrupted
by a noisy burst of merriment from another part of
the house, which instantly called the partisan captain
to his feet.

“For God's sake, Mr. Schoonmacker, what means
this revelry? Do those sounds come from the rebels,
who lie near enough and in sufficient force to
crush us in a moment, or is it our own friends who
play the conspirator after such a fashion? Who
the dev—”

“Your zeal is too violent—pardon me, my worthy
friend,” interrupted the amiable host. “The revellers
you hear are only the good country people whom
our friends have brought with them to honour my
poor house, and who are making themselves a little
merry over a barrel of beer in the kitchen. We
could not, you know, Mr. Bradshawe,” he added, in
an insinuating, deprecatory tone, as the other raised
his eyebrows with a look of unpleased surprise,
“we could not but give them the means of drinking
the health of the king, and all are so well armed
that we dread no surprise from Colonel Weston.”

A shade of chagrin and vexation passed over the
haughty features of Bradshawe as he compared in
his mind more than one orderly and stern assemblage
of the Whigs, to which he had managed to
gain access, with the carousing crew with whom

he had now to deal. “The fools, too!” he muttered,
“sending my countrymen to drink with their
servants! Do they think that is the way to confirm
the loyalty of American yeomen?” Then addressing
himself to the company with that urbane
and candid air which he knew so well how to assume,
and by which he had often profited when before
a jury in other days, he said, “I was too hasty,
gentlemen; but I was afraid, from the noise I heard,
that a body of Indians that I have brought with me
had somehow got access to liquor; and, to prevent
the possibility of so dangerous a circumstance, I
think we had better at once call our friends together,
and let the proclamation of General St. Leger, with
the accompanying letter from Sir John Johnson,
both of which lie before you, be read aloud for the
benefit of all.”

The suggestion, which could not but have weight
with all parties, was instantly adopted. A meeting
was soon organized by calling Major MacDonald to
the chair and appointing Mr. Schoonmacker secretary;
and the more humble adherents of the royal
cause being summoned from the other parts of the
house, the proclamation and letter were duly read
by the latter.

The appeal of Sir John to the timid and disaffected
inhabitants of Tryon county to follow his
example, and, abandoning their present neutral position,
take up arms for their lawful sovereign, was
received with warm approbation. Nor was there
less enthusiasm upon hearing the proclamation from
St. Leger read, inviting all true subjects of the king,
and all violators of the laws, who hoped pardon for
past offences from his majesty's goodness, to come
and enroll themselves with his army now before
Fort Stanwix. Bradshawe then moved a resolution,
beginning with the customary preamble, “At

a meeting of the loyal gentry and yeomanry of
Tryon county, convened,” &c., and by way of
clinching matters while they seemed in such capital
train, he mounted a chair and commenced haranguing
the assemblage, urging the importance of immediate
action in the cause to which every man
present had now fully committed himself.

His adroit, and, withal, impassioned eloquence,
was addressed chiefly to the common people; and
the generous boldness with which he committed his
and their property to the chances of a civil war, in
which either had but little or nothing to lose, elicited
their rapturous admiration; particularly when he set
forth, in glowing terms, how much they were to expect
from the exhaustless bounty of their sovereign.
In the midst of his harangue, however, and while
all parties were warmed up to the highest pitch of
loyal enthusiasm, he met with an interruption, the
cause of which may be best explained by looking
back a few pages in our narrative.

4. CHAPTER IV.
THE SPY.

—Brooks.

The outlaw Valtmeyer, after parting with his
officer in the manner already described, had proceeded
at once, agreeably to the permission he had
obtained, toward Fort Dayton, which had been for
some time garrisoned by a battalion of Continental
troops under the command of Colonel Weston, but
where several detachments of other corps had recently
taken up their temporary quarters. The object
of Valtmeyer was partly to reconnoitre the outworks
of the fort for future attack, and partly to
spy out any movement upon the part of Weston
and his people which might indicate that Bradshawe's
mission in the neighbourhood was suspected,
and give him and his friends timely warning of
the danger.

A well-trained Indian warrior would, as Bradshawe
had hinted, have better performed this duty
than the wild borderer to whom it was now intrusted;
for the character of Valtmeyer, whose vindictive daring
and brutal courage has made his name terrible
in the traditions of this region, was even less suited

than that of a wild Indian to the duties and responsibilities
of a regular soldier. The Indian warrior,
though he insists upon encountering his enemy wholly
after his own fashion, is still amenable to certain
rude laws of discipline, for whose observance he
may be relied upon; but the white frontiersman
who has led the life of a free hunter, perhaps of all
other men shrinks most from every form of military
subordination. And, indeed, Valtmeyer, though, to
answer his own selfish purposes, he had so often
been a mere tool in the hands of Bradshawe, already
regretted having taken service with the Royal
Rangers, and consenting to act under the command
of any person save that of Wolfert Valtmeyer.

Being now wholly withdrawn from the surveillance
of his officer, the worthy Wolfert, somewhat
oblivious of his military duties, bethought himself
how he could turn the occasion to the best account
by what a similar combatant in the battle of Bennington
afterward called making war on his own
hook. In other words, he determined to amuse himself
for an hour or so within the purlieus of Fort
Dayton, by carrying off or slaying some of the sentinels;
a species of entertainment which he thought
there would be no difficulty in indulging himself in.
This seizing of opposite partisans, and holding them
to ransom, was always a favourite feat with Valtmeyer
and his compeer Joe Bettys; and the annals
of the period make it of so common occurrence in
the province of New-York, that one would almost
think that man-stealing was the peculiar forte of its
inhabitants.

Had Wolfert, in approaching the fort, got his eye
upon any of the picket-guard, he might very possibly
have successfully effected his purpose. But,
ill-practised as he was in the regulations of a well-ordered
garrison, the adventurous hunter had not

the least idea how far the line of outposts extended;
and, like many a cunning person, he overreached
himself while trying to circumvent others. In a
word, he got completely within the line of defences
without being at all aware of their position.

With the stealthy art of a practised deer-stalker,
he managed to creep, alike unobserved by others and
himself unobserving, within the outer line of pickets,
which was posted in the deep shadow of a wood, to
a thicket of briers, where he paused. The gleam of
a sentinel's musket above the bushes had lured him
thus far, and he halted to see if the sentinel himself
were now visible. It seemed that he could make
out nothing satisfactory as yet; for now, throwing
himself upon his chest, he continues slowly to advance,
crawling through the long grass until he gains
a copse of dogwood and sumach bushes within half
pistol-shot of his victim. The soldier is now fully
displayed to view; Valtmeyer can see his very buttons
gleam in the light of the moon, as the planet
from time to time shines through the clouds which
traverse her face. Another moment, and the seizure
is fully accomplished. The brigand, crumpling
his worsted sash in his hands, has leaped upon the
sentinel just as he was turning in his monotonous
walk, and borne him to the ground, while adroitly
gagging his mouth before he could utter a cry.

“Pshaw! what a cocksparrow!” muttered Wolfert,
when, having dragged his captive within the
bushes, he for the first time observed that it was
but a stripling recruit of some sixteen or eighteen
years. “I must carry away with me something
better than a boy.”

With these words he hastily secured the lad to a
sapling by the aid of a thong which he cut from his
leather hunting-shirt, and then prepared to make a
similar onset upon the next sentinel in the same line.

This man had paused for a moment at the end
of his walk, waiting for a glimpse of moonlight to
reveal his comrade, whom he had missed in his last
turn. A straggling beam fell at last upon the path
before him, and the soldier, resting on his musket,
leaned forward, as if trying to pierce the gloom.
The side of his person was turned toward Valtmeyer,
and his head only partially averted; but Wolfert
preferred seizing the present moment rather than to
wait for a more favourable one, which might not
come. Clasping his hands above his head, he leaped
forward with a sudden bound, and threw them
like a noose over the neck of the other, slipping them
down below the elbows, which were thus pinioned
to the side of his prisoner, whose musket dropped
from his hands.

“Wolfert Valtmeyer, by the Etarnal!” ejaculated
the man, instantly recognising his assailant from the
well-known trick which they had often practised
upon each other in the mock-wrestling of former
days.

“Exactly the man, Balt; and you must go with
him.”

“Not unless he's a better man than ever I proved
him,” said Balt, struggling in the brawny arms of
his brother borderer, who held him at such disadvantage.

“Donder und blixem, manny, you would not have
me kill a brother hunter, would ye?” growled Valtmeyer,
whose voice thickened with anger as he felt
himself compelled to use every effort to maintain
his grip.

“There's—no—brother—hood—between—us—
in—this—quar'l,” panted forth the stout-hearted
Balt, without an instant relaxing his endeavour.

“Then die the death of a rebel fool,” muttered
the other, hastily drawing his knife, and raising it

to strike. The blow, as driven from behind by so
powerful a hand, must have cut short the biography
of the worthy Balt had it fairly descended into the
neck at which it was aimed. But the intent of the
Tory desperado was foreseen in the very instant
that the former released his grip with one hand in
order to draw his knife with the other; and Balt,
dropping suddenly upon his knees as Valtmeyer,
who was full a head taller than his opponent, threw
the whole weight of his body into the blow, the gigantic
borderer was pitched completely over the
head of his antagonist, and measured his length
upon the sod. The clanging of his arms as he fell
raised an instant alarm among those whom the deep-breathed
threatenings of these sturdy foes had not
before roused. But Valtmeyer was upon his feet
before Balt or the other sentinel, who rushed to the
spot, could seize him. Indeed, he brought the former
to the ground with a pistol-shot, stunning, but
happily not wounding him, as he himself was in the
act of rising. The other sentinel, who ought to have
fired upon the first alarm, made a motion to charge
upon him, and then threw away his shot by firing
just at the instant when Valtmeyer parried the thrust
of the bayonet with his knife, and, of course, simultaneously
averted the muzzle of the gun from his
body.

While this was passing the guard turned out; but,
though Valtmeyer received their fire unharmed as
he rushed toward the wood, he escaped one danger
only to fall into another. Ignorant of the existence
of the outer line of sentinels, he was seized by the
picket-guard in the moment that, thinking he had
escaped all dangers, he relaxed his efforts to make
good his advantage.

The prisoner being brought before Colonel Weston,
that sagacious officer lost no time in a fruitless

examination of so determined a fellow taken under
such circumstances. The redoubtable Valtmeyer
was well known to him by fame, and Balt fully established
his identity. Weston was before aware
that the noted outlaw had taken service with one
of the different corps of Butler's Rangers, and he
readily conceived that he had been but now acting
as the scout for some predatory band of Tories.
Captain De Roos, who, as an active and efficient
partisan officer, had been summoned to the fort for
the very purpose of scouring the country for such
offenders, was sent off with his command to make
the circuit of the neighbourhood, and another detachment
of troops was instantly despatched to the
suspected house of Mr. Schoonmacker. The latter
duty was one of some delicacy, and requiring a
cooler judgment than that of De Roos; and Weston
selected Major Greyslaer as the officer to whom
it might best be intrusted.

De Roos, rashly insisting that he could squeeze
something out of the sulky villain, was permitted to
take Valtmeyer with him as a guide to the whereabout
of his friends; and Valtmeyer, after fooling
with him for a season, and leading his party in every
direction but the right one, finally succeeded in
saving his own neck from the gallows by giving
them the slip entirely. The expedition of Greyslaer
had a different issue.

Ever cool and steady in his purposes when duty
called upon him to collect his energies, this officer
advanced with speed and secrecy to the goal he
had in view. The grounds around Schoonmacker's
house were crossed, and every door beset by a party
of armed men in perfect quietness. Balt—who had
soon recovered from the stunning effects of the pistol-shot
that grazed his temple—availed himself of
the lesson in soldier-craft which he had just received

from his brother woodsman, and secured the only
sentinel that was upon his post. The temptation
of the beer-barrel in the kitchen proved too strong
for the Indians and their newly-levied white comrades
to permit their keeping a better watch. The
house was, in fact, fairly surrounded by the Whig
forces before a sound was heard to interrupt the
harangue which Bradshawe was perorating within.
MacDonald alone sprang from his seat, and, darting
into an adjacent closet, made his escape through an
open window in the moment that Greyslaer entered
the room with a file of bayonets.

“In the name of the Continental Congress, I
claim you all as my prisoners,” cried Max, advancing
to the table, and, with great presence of mind,
seizing all the papers upon it, including the commission
of Bradshawe.

That officer, who had stood for the moment astonished
at the scene, now made a fiery movement
to clutch the papers from Greyslaer as the latter
quietly ran his eye over their superscription; but
he instantly found himself pinioned by two sturdy
fellows behind him.

“See that you secure that spy effectually, my
men.”

“Spy, sir!” cried Bradshawe, with a keen look
of anxious inquiry, while he vainly tried to give his
voice the tone of indignant disclaimer to the imputed
character.

“Spy was the word, sir,” answered Max, gravely;
“and, unless these documents speak falsely, as
such you will probably suffer by dawn to-morrow.
This paper purports to be the commission of Walter
Bradshawe as captain in Butler's regiment of
Royal Rangers; and the promised promotion in
this note, for certain service to be rendered this
very night, leaves no doubt of the character in which

Captain Bradshawe has introduced himself into an
enemy's country. Lansingh, remove your prisoner
to the room on the other side of the hall, and see
that he be well guarded!”

It is astonishing how invariably the success of
an individual, whether in good or evil undertakings,
affects his character with the vulgar; a term which,
both in its conventional as well as its primitive
sense, includes, perhaps, the majority of mankind.
Certain it is, that, in this instance, the very associates
and complotters of the prisoner, who but an
hour before had hailed his appearance among them
with such cordial greetings, now slunk from his
side as if he had been a convicted felon. Indeed,
some of the meaner minds present even attempted
to conciliate the successful party by exhibiting the
strongest signs of personal aversion to Bradshawe,
and of coarse gratification at the mode in which
his career seemed suddenly about to be brought to
a close.

These miscreants were scattered among others
of both parties who were collected in the hall and
grouped around the open door of the apartment in
which Bradshawe, guarded by a couple of sentinels,
was pacing to and fro. And while Mr. Schoonmacker
and others of the leading Tories in the opposite
room were listening in dignified dejection to
the measures which Greyslaer stated, in the most
courteous terms, it was his painful duty to adopt in
regard to them, their followers were exchanging tokens
of recognition with old neighbours and former
comrades of the opposite party.

“Jim, you've done the darn thing agin us tonight,
and no mistake,” said one. “But if the Injuns
hadn't got as drunk as fiddlers, you couldn't
have popped in upon us as you did.”

The Congress soldier made no reply; but the demure

gravity of him and his comrades did not prevent
others of the Tory militia from attempting a
conversation with them.

“Well, Mat,” said a second, “if I'm to be taken
by the Whigs, I'm only glad that you happened to
come up from the fort along with them; for you
are just the man to say a good word for an old
friend. All this muss is of Wat Bradshawe's cooking.”

“Yes,” cried a third, “the friends of the king
only met to drink his health and have a little social
junketing together; and if bully Bradshawe had not
come among us, things would have gone off as
quietly as possible. All the harm I wish him is,
that he may get paid off for his old scrapes with a
halter, and rid the country of such a pest; there's
the affair, now, of old De Roos's daughter, for
which he ought to have swung eight years since.”

“Eight years!” rejoined the other. “No, the
scrape you speak of is hardly a matter of six years
by gone. But give the devil his due. The few
folks that knowed of it talked hard about wild Wat
for his share in that business. But things could not
have gone so far, after all, or the Rooses would
never have refused to appear against him, much less
would the gal herself have rejected his offer when
he wanted to make an honest woman of her.”

Bradshawe betrayed no agitation during this discussion,
which took place so near to him that, though
the speakers lowered their voices somewhat, it must
have been at least partially overheard by himself as
well as by others. But when another of the rustic
gossipers pointed significantly toward the room in
which Major Greyslaer was engaged, while whispering
that Miss De Roos had now “a raal truelove
of her own, and no mistake,” the features of

the Tory captain writhed with an expression almost
fiendish.

“Yes! I must live,” he muttered internally. “I
cannot, I will not die.—I have too many stakes yet
in the game of life to have the cards dashed thus
suddenly from my hands.—My scheme of existence
is too intimately interwoven with that of others to
stop here, and stop singly. I know, I feel that Alida's
fate and that of this moonstruck boy is interwoven
with mine.—I only can redeem her name,
or blast it with utter infamy; and their peace or
my revenge—whichever is ultimately to triumph—
were both a nullity if I perish now.” Alas! Walter
Bradshawe, dost thou think that Providence hath
but one mode of accomplishing its ends, if innocence
is to be vindicated, and that only through so
foul an instrument as thou!

Thus thought, or “thought he thought,” this ironhearted
desperado. But there were other distracting
feelings in his bosom which it were impossible for
him to analyze. Though hatred had long since predominated
over love in the warring passions of his
stormy breast, yet that hatred was born only of the
indignation and horror with which his attempts to
control Alida's inclinations had been received, and
his admiration had increased from the very circumstances
which chilled his love; but now the subtle
workings of jealousy infused a new element among
his conflicting passions, which quickened both love
and hatred into a more poignant existence.

Few, even of the most ignoble natures, are wholly
base; and Bradshawe, though he could not conceive
of, much less realize, one generous emotion
that belongs to those dispositions which the
world terms chivalrous, still possessed some of the
qualities that keep a man from becoming despicable
either to himself or to others. He had both

bravery and ability, and he knew it. Incapable of
one magnanimous thought, in deed he might still
be great! And determined in purpose as he was
loose in principle, he believed that he was a man
born for the very time and country in which his
lot was cast; for, regarding all others as senseless
zealots, he deemed that every man of abilities
engaged in the present political struggle was an adventurer
like himself, having his own selfish views
as the ultimate objects of his dangers and his toils.

If the aspiring aims, then, of a reckless ambition,
backed by no ordinary talent and courage the most
unflinching, can redeem from ignominy a mind
otherwise contracted, coarse, and selfish, Bradshawe
may be enrolled upon the same list with many a
hero, not less mean of soul, whom the world has
consented to admire; for the majority of mankind
always look to the deeds of those who distinguish
themselves beyond the herd, without much regard
to the moral end which those deeds were intended
to promote; and one brilliant invading campaign of
Napoleon is more dazzling to the mind than the
whole military career of HIM who fought only to
preserve his country! whose Heaven-directed arms
triumphed ultimately over thousands as brave as
Walter Bradshawe in the field; whose godlike counsels
discomfited thousands more gifted, if not more
unprincipled, in the cabinet.

But, awarding whatever credit we may to Bradshawe
for his aspirations after fame, let us leave
him now to awaken from the vague dream which,
almost unknown to himself, had at times passed
through his brain—of sharing his future renown with
Alida; and, while wiping off, in honourable marriage,
the reproach which he had attached to her
name, of gratifying, at the last, the passion which
was rooted in his heart. Let us leave the searching

pang of jealousy to reveal to him first the existence
of this lingering touch of tenderness amid feelings
which he himself thought had become only
those of hatred. Let us leave him with that utter
desolation of the heart's best earthly hope, which
would prompt most men to welcome the grave upon
whose brink he stood, but from which he, fired with
a burning lust of vengeance, shrunk as from a dungeon
where the plotting brain and relentless hand
of malignity would lie helpless for ever.

How little they read the man who deemed that
terror of his fate had stupified him, when, obedient
to the order of his captor, he moved off, with stolid
and downcast look, amid the guard which conducted
him to durance at the quarters of the patriots.

5. CHAPTER V.
THE FIELD OF ORISKANY.

Edward Sanford.

The doom which Greyslaer had, with military
sternness, predicted, was formally, by a military
court, pronounced upon Bradshawe that very night;
but when the hour of execution arrived on the morrow,
events were at hand which, postponing it for
the present, gave him, in fact, the advantages of an
indefinite reprieval.

Some Continental officers, of a rank superior to
that of the commandant, who arrived at Fort Dayton
during the night, suggested doubts as to the
policy of thus summarily executing martial law
upon the prisoner. In the morning a message arrived
from the beleaguered garrison of Fort Stanwix,
urging the Whig forces to press forward to the
scene of action, and attempt raising the seige at
once, or their succour would come too late to save
their compatriots. All was then bustle and motion.
The greater part of the troops at once hurried forward
to join Herkimer's forces, which had already
taken up their line of march for Oriskany, while a

detachment was sent down the river to speed on
those who still loitered on the road, to the border.
When this last was about to depart, the opportunity
was deemed a good one of getting rid of Bradshawe,
by sending him to headquarters at Albany, where
his sentence could either be enforced or remitted,
as a higher military authority should decide; and
he was accordingly marched off, strictly guarded by
the detachment.

Of the use that Walter Bradshawe made of this
reprieve to carry into effect his meditated vengeance
against Alida and her lover, we shall see hereafter.
We must now return to other personages of our
story, who have been, perhaps, too long forgotten.

It has been already incidentally mentioned that
Brant and his followers were playing a conspicuous
part in the bold invasion which now threatened to
give the royalists possession of at least two thirds
of the fair province of New-York, if, indeed, they
should not succeed in overrunning the whole.
Brant, who had brought nearly a thousand Iroquois
warriors to the standard of St. Leger, was indeed
the very soul of the expedition; for, if there be a
doubt of his devising the scheme itself, he certainly
planned some of its most important details; and the
zeal with which he executed his share of the undertaking
proved how thoroughly his heart was engaged
in it. The Johnsons, indeed, had come back
to struggle once more for a noble patrimony which
had been wrested from them, and many of their refugee
friends were animated by the hope of recovering
the valuable estates they had forfeited; but
Brant fought to recover the ancient seats of his
people, whose name as a nation was in danger of
being blotted out from the land.

When, therefore, he learned, through his scouts,
that Herkimer was approaching by forced marches

to break up the encampment of St. Leger, relieve
Fort Stanwix, and repel the advance of the invaders
through the valley of which it was the portal,
he instantly suggested measures for his discomfiture,
and planned that masterly ambuscade which
resulted in the bloody field of Oriskany.

There is, within a few miles of Fort Stanwix, a
deep hollow or ravine which intersects the forest
road by which Herkimer and his brave but undisciplined
army of partisan forces were approaching
to St. Leger's lines. The ravine sweeps toward
the east in a semicircular form, either horn of the
crescent thus formed bearing a northern and southern
direction, and enclosing a level and elevated
piece of ground upon the western side. The bottom
of the ravine was marshy, and the road crossed
it by means of a causeway. This was the spot selected
by Brant for attacking the column of Herkimer;
and hither St. Leger had sent a large force of
royalists to take post with his Indians on the morning
of the fatal sixth of August.

The white troops, consisting of detachments
from Claus's and Butler's Rangers and Johnson's
Greens, with a battalion of Major Watts's Royal
New-Yorkers, disposed themselves in the form of a
semicircle, with a swarm of Red warriors clustering
like bees upon either extremity; and it would seem
as if nothing could save Herkimer's column from
annihilation, should it once push fairly within the
horns of the crescent thus formed. The fortunes
of war, however, turn upon strange incidents; and
in the present instance, the very circumstance which
hurried hundreds of brave men among the patriots
upon their fate, was a cause of preservation to their
comrades.

The veteran General Herkimer, who was a wary
and experienced bush-fighter, aware of the character

of this ground, had ordered a halt when within a
few hundred yards of the spot where the battle was
ultimately joined; but, irritated by the mutinous
remonstrances of some of his insubordinate followers,
several of whom flatly charged the stout old
general with cowardice, he gave the order to “march
on” while his ranks were yet in confusion; and
eagerly was the order obeyed by the rash gathering
of border yeomanry.

“March on,” shouted the fiery Cox and ill-fated
Eisenlord. “March on,” thundered the Herculean
Gardinier and Samson-like Dillenback, whose puissant
deeds at Oriskany have immortalized their
names in border story. “March on,” echoed the
patriotic Billington and long-regretted Paris, and
many another brave civilian and gallant gentleman,
whom neither rank, nor station, nor want of skill in
arms had prevented from volunteering upon this fatal
field—the first and last they ever saw! “March
on,” shouted the hot-headed De Roos, catching up
the cry as quickly it ran from rank to rank, and
dashing wildly forward, he scarce knew where.

And already the foremost files have descended
into the hollow, and others, pressing from behind,
are pouring in a living tide to meet the opposing
shock below.

The impatience of Brant's warriors does not allow
them to wait until the Whig forces have all descended
into the ravine; but, raising their well-known
war-cry, the Mohawks pour a volley, which nearly
annihilates half of Herkimer's foremost division,
and wholly cuts off the remainder from the support
of their comrades. Uprising then among the bushes,
they spring with tomahawk and javelin upon
the panic-stricken corps, already broken and borne
down by that first onslaught. The Refugees push
forward with their bayonets to share in the massacre

of their countrymen. But now fresh foes are
rushing upon them in turn. Headstrong and impetuous
themselves, or urged on by the fiery masses
that press upon them from behind, they descend like
an avalanche from the plain above, and fill that little
vale with carnage and destruction; now swooping
down to be dispersed in death, and now bearing
with them a resistless force that hurls hundreds
who oppose it into eternity.

The leaders of both parties soon began to see that
this indiscriminate melee could result in no positive
advantage to either, while involving the destruction
of both; and, in a momentary pause of the conflict,
the voices of Herkimer's officers and of the opposing
leaders were simultaneously heard calling upon
their men to betake themselves to the bushes and
form anew under their cover. And now the fight is
somewhat changed in its character. Major Greyslaer,
seeing the causeway partially cleared of its
struggling combatants, rallies a compact band of
well-disciplined followers, and charges the thickets
in advance. But the throng through which he
cleaves a passage closes instantly behind him, and,
with the loss of half his men, he is obliged to cut
his way back to his comrades, where the chieftain
Teondetha, with his Oneida rifles, covers the shattered
band till Greyslaer can take new order.

The Whig yeomanry, in the mean time, had for
the most part taken post behind the adjacent trees,
where each man, as from a citadel of his own, made
war upon the enemy by keeping up an incessant
firing. But Brant, whose Indians were chiefly galled
by these sharpshooters, gave his orders, and the
Mohawks, wherever they saw the flash of a rifle,
would rush up, and, with lance or tomahawk, despatch
the marksman before he could gain time to
reload. Balt, whose unerring rifle had already

made many a foeman bite the dust, had ensconced
himself behind a shattered oak, a little in advance
of a thicket of birch and juniper, from which Christian
Lansingh, with others of Greyslaer's followers,
kept up a steady fire, and thus covered Balt's position.
The worthy hunter absolutely foamed with
rage when he saw several of his acquaintance, who
were less protected than himself, thus falling singly
beneath the murderous tomahawks of Brant's people;
but his anger received a new turn when he
beheld Greyslaer breaking his cover and rushing
with clubbed rifle after one of the retreating Mohawks,
who had despatched an unfortunate militiaman
within a few paces of him.

“Goody Lordy!” he exclaimed, “the boy's mad!
He'll spoil the breaching or bend the bar'l of the best
rifle in the county. Tormented lightning! though,
how he's buried the brass into him.”

Greyslaer, as Balt spoke, drove the angular metal
with which the stock of the weapon was shod
deep into the brain of the flying savage, while Balt
himself, in the same moment, brought down a javelin
man who was flying to the assistance of the
other.

“Aha! ain't that the caper on't, you pisen copperhead!
Down, major, down,” shouted the woodsman,
as his quick ear caught the click of a dozen
triggers in the opposite thicket; and Max, obedient
to the word, threw himself upon his face, while the
fire of a whole platoon of Tory rangers, that was
instantly answered by a volley from his own men,
passed harmlessly over him.

The dropping shots now became less frequent,
for the borderers on either side were so well protected
by the woodland cover, that, thought the
clothes of many were riddled with bullets, yet the
grazing of an elbow or some slight flesh-wound in

the leg was all the execution done by those who
were as practised in avoiding exposure to the aim
of an enemy, as in availing themselves with unerring
quickness of each chance of planting a bullet.

General Herkimer, who had already seen Greyslaer's
spirited effort to cut his way through the enemy
with a handful of men, deemed this the fitting
time to execute the movement upon a larger scale.
The fatal causeway was again thronged by the patriots
in the instant they heard the voice of their
leader exhorting his troops to force the passage in
which their bravest had already fallen. But, even
before they could form, and in the moment that
those closing ranks exposed themselves, a murderous
fire was poured in upon them on every side;
every tree and bush seemed to branch out with
flame.

Thrice, with desperate valour, did Herkimer cross
the causeway and charge the thronged hillside in
front; and thrice the files who rushed into the
places of the fallen were mowed down by the deadly
rifles from the thickets, or beaten back by the
cloud of spears and tomahawks that instantly thickened
in the path before them. In the third charge
the veteran fell, a musket-ball, which killed his
horse, having shattered his knee while passing
through the body of the charger.

But the fall of their general, instead of disheartening,
seems only to nerve his brave followers with
new determination of spirit, as, placed on his saddle
beneath a tree, the stout old soldier still essays
to order the battle. His manly tones, heard even
above the din of the conflict, give system and efficacy
to the brave endeavour of his broken ranks.
The tree against which he leans becomes a central
point round which they rally, fighting now, not for
conquest—hardly for self-preservation—but only in

stubborn resistance of their fate. And now, as the
enemy, impatient of this long opposition, concentre
round them, they form in circles, and receive in
silence the furious charge of their hostile countrymen.
Bayonet crosses bayonet, or the clubbed rifle
batters the opposing gunstock as they fight hand to
hand and foot to foot. Again and again do the
royalists recoil from the wall of iron hearts against
which they have hurled themselves. But, though
the living rampart yields not, it begins to crumble
with these successive shocks; the ranks of the patriots
grow thinner around their wounded general,
where brave men strew the ground like leaves when
the autumn is serest.

The Indian allies upon either side have, in the
mean time, suspended their firing. In vain does
the voice of Brant encourage his Mohawks to strike
a blow which shall at once decide this fearful crisis.
In vain does the gallant shout of Teondetha cheer
on the Oneidas to rescue his friends from the destruction
that hedges them in. Not an Indian will
move in that green-wood. The warriors of the forest
upon both sides have paused to watch this terrible
death-struggle between white men of the same
country and language. They have already ceased
to fire upon each other; and now, gazing together
upon the well-matched contest of those who involved
them in this family quarrel, they will not raise
an arm to strike for either party.

A storm, a terrific midsummer tempest, such as
often marks the sudden vicissitudes of our climate,
was the Heaven-directed interposition which stayed
the slaughter of that battle-field. The breath of
the thunder-gust swept the rain in sheets of foam
through the forest, and the hail burst down in torrents
upon those warring bands, whose arms now

flashed only as they glinted back the lightning's
glare.

There is a pause, then, in the bloody fight of Oriskany;
but the battle, which seemed but now nearly
ended in the overthrow of the patriots, is soon to be
resumed under different auspices. The royalists
have withdrawn for the moment to a spot where a
heavier forest-growth affords them some protection
from the elements. The republicans have conveyed
their wounded general to an adjacent knoll, from
which, exposed as it is to the fire of the enemy, he
insists upon ordering the battle when it shall be resumed;
and here, in the heat of the onslaught
which succeeded, the sturdy old border chief was
observed, with great deliberation, to take his flint
and tinder-box from his pocket, light his pipe, and
smoke with perfect composure. The veteran bush-fighter,
who missed many an officer around him,
grieved not the less for more than one favourite
rifle-shot who had perished among his private soldiers;
and, in order to counteract the mode of warfare
adopted by Brant, when, in the early part of
the battle, the Indian spears and tomahawks made
such dreadful havoc among the scattered riflemen,
Herkimer commanded his sharpshooters to station
themselves in pairs behind a single tree, and one
always to reserve his fire till the Indians should
rush up to despatch his comrade when loading.

In the mean time, while the different dispositions
for attack and defence were thus making by their
leaders, the rude soldiers on either side, hundreds
of whom were mutually acquainted, exchanged
many a bitter jeer with each other, while ever and
anon, as some taunting cry would rise among the
young warriors of Brant's party, it was echoed by
the opposing Oneidas with a fierce whoop of defiance,

that would pierce wildly amid the peltings of
the storm.

An hour elapsed before an abatement of the tempest
allowed the work of death to commence anew.
A movement on the part of the royalists by Major
Watts's battalion, first drew the fire of the patriots;
and then the Mohawks, cheered on by the terrible
war-whoop of Brant, and uttering yell on yell to intimidate
their foes, commenced the onslaught, tomahawk
in hand. But the cool execution done by the
marksmen whom Herkimer had so wisely planted
to sustain each other, made them quickly recoil;
and the Oneidas, eagerly pressing forward from the
republican side, drove them back upon a large body
of Butler's Rangers. Many of this corps had been
so severely handled by Greyslaer's men in the first
part of the battle, that they had fallen back to take
care of their wounded. But Bradshawe's company,
which had suffered least, was now in advance.
These fierce men brooked no control from the young
subaltern who was now nominally their commander.
Headed by the terrible Valtmeyer, whose
clothes were smeared with the gore from a dozen
scalps which dangled at his waist, they broke their
ranks, rushed singly upon the Oneidas, who had intruded
into their lair, and, driving them back among
their friends, became the next moment themselves
mixed up in wild melée with partisans of the other
side. This onslaught served as a signal for a rival
corps in another part of the field; and Claus's Rangers
broke their cover to battle with their foemen
hand to hand.

This corps of refugee royalists consisted of men
enlisted chiefly from the very neighbourhood where
they were now fighting. They had come back to
their former homes, bearing with them the hot
thirst of vengeance against their former friends and

neighbours; and when they heard the triumphant
shout of the Whigs at a momentary recoil of their
friends, and perhaps recognised the voices of some
who had aided in driving them from their country,
their impatience could not be restrained; they rushed
forward with a fiendish yell of hatred and ferocity,
while the patriots, instead of awaiting the charge,
in obedience to the commands of their officer, sprang
like chafed tigers from their covert, and met them
in the midst. Bayonets and clubbed muskets made
the first shock fatal to many; but these were quickly
thrown aside as the parties came in grappling
contact, drawing their knives and throttling each
other, stabbing, and literally dying in each other's
embrace.[1]

And thus, for five long hours, raged this ruthless
conflict. All military order had been lost in the
moment when the wild bush-fighters first broke
their cover and rushed forward to decide the battle
hand to hand. Men fought with the fury of demons;
or if, by chance, a squad or party of five or six
found themselves acting together, these would
quickly form rush forward, and, charging into the
thickest of the fight, soon be lost amid the crowd of
combatants. At one moment the tomahawk of
some fierce Red warrior would crash among the
bayonets and spears of whites and Indians as he
hewed his way to rescue some comrade that was
beset by clustering foes; at another, the shattering
of shafts and clashing of steel would be heard where
a sturdy pioneer, with his back to a tree, stood,
axe in hand, cleaving down a soldier at every blow,
or matching the cherished tool of his craft with the
ponderous mace of some brawny savage. Now
the groans of the dying, mixed with imprecations
deep and foul, rose harshly above the din of the

battle, and now te dismal howl or exulting yell of
the red Indian was mocked by a thousand demoniac
voices, screeching wild through the forest, as if the
very fiends of hell were let loose in that black
ravine.

The turmoil of the elements has long since subsided.
The sky is clear and serene above. Happily,
the forest glooms interpose a veil between its
meek, holy eye, and this dance of devilish passions
upon the earth.

6. CHAPTER VI.
THE ISSUES OF THE BATTLE.

—Discourse
of Gouverneur Morris before the New-York Historical Society,
1812.

An accomplished statesman and eloquent writer
has, in the passage which heads this chapter, well
depicted the appearance which the field of Oriskany
presented when the fight was over. The battle itself,
while the most bloody fought during the Revolution,
is remarkable for having been contested exclusively
between Americans, or, at least, between
those who, if not natives of the soil, were all denizens
of the province in which it was fought. And
though its political consequences were of slight
moment, for both parties claimed the victory, yet,
from the character of the troops engaged in it—from
the number of Indian warriors that were arrayed
upon either side—the protracted fierceness of the
action, and the terrible slaughter which marked its
progress, it must be held the most memorable conflict
that marked our seven years' struggle for national
independence.

Of the field officers that fell, it is true that most,
like the brave Herkimer himself, were only militiamen,
and of no great public consideration beyond
their own county: but with these gallant gentlemen
were associated as volunteers more than one mili

tary man of rank and repute that had been won upon
other fields; and many a civilian of eminence, who,
at the call of patriotism, had shouldered a musket
and met his death as a private soldier. The combatants
upon either side consisting almost exclusively
of inhabitants of the Mohawk Valley, there
were so many friends and neighbours, kinsmen, and
even brothers arrayed against each other, that the
battle partook of the nature of a series of private
feuds, in which the most bitter feelings of the human
heart were brought into play between the
greater part of those engaged. And when the few
who were actuated by a more chivalric spirit—like
the gallant Major Watts of the Royal New-Yorkers,
and others who might be designated among his hostile
compatriots—met in opposing arms, they too
fought with a stubborn valour, as if the military
character of their native province depended equally
upon the dauntless bearing of either party. The
annalist has elsewhere preserved so many minute
and thrilling details of Herkimer's last field,[2] that
it hardly becomes us to recapitulate them here,
though we would fain recall some of those traits of
chivalrous gallantry and generous daring which redeem
the brutal ferocity of the contest.

The deeds of the brave Captain Dillenback,
though his name is not intermingled with the thread
of our story, are so characteristic of the times in
which its scenes are laid, that they can hardly be
passed over. This officer had his private enemies
among those who were now arrayed in battle as public
foes; and Wolfert Valtmeyer, with three others
among the most desperate of the Refugees, determined
to seize his person in the midst of the fight,
and carry him off for some purpose best known
to themselves. Watching their opportunity, these

four desperadoes, when the tumult of the conflict
was at the highest, cut their way to the spot where
Dillenback was standing; and one of them succeeded
in mastering his gun for a moment. But Dillenback,
who caught sight of Valtmeyer's well-known
form pressing forward to aid his comrades in the
capture, knew better than to trust himself to the
tender mercies of his outlaw band. He swore that
he would not be taken alive, and he was not.
Wrenching his gun from the grasp of the first assailant,
he felled him to the earth with the breech,
shot the second dead, and plunged the bayonet into
the heart of the third. But in the moment of his
last triumph the brave Whig was himself laid dead
by a pistol-shot from Valtmeyer, who chanced to
be the fourth in coming up to him.

But perhaps as true a chevalier as met his fate
amid all that host of valiant hearts was a former
friend of Balt the woodsman; an old Mohawk hunter,
who bore the uncouth Dutch name of Bronkahorlst.

It was in the heat of the fight, when Brant's
dusky followers, flitting from tree to tree, had at one
time almost surrounded Greyslaer's small command,
that Balt, in the thickest of the fire, heard a well-known
voice calling him by name from behind
a large tree near; and, looking out from the huge
trunk which sheltered his own person, he recognised
the only Indian with whom his prejudices
against the race had ever allowed him to be upon
terms of intimacy.

“Come, my brother,” said the Iroquois warrior,
in his own tongue, “come and escape death or torture
by surrendering to your old friend, who pledges
the word of a Mohawk for your kind treatment and
protection.”

“Rather to you than to anybody, my noble old

boy; but Balt will be prisoner this day to no mortal
man. My name is Nozun Dotji—he that never
shirks.”

“And my name,” cried the Indian, “is The Killer
of Brave Men; so come on; we are happily
met.” With these words both parties threw down
their rifles, and, drawing their knives, rushed upon
each other.

The struggle was only a brief one; for Time, who
had nerved the brawny form of the white borderer
into the full maturity of manly strength, had dealt
less leniently with the aged Indian, who was borne
at once to the ground as they closed in the death-grapple.
It was in vain that Balt, mindful of other
days and kinder meetings in the deep woodlands,
attempted to save his opponent's life by making
him a prisoner; for, in the moment that he mastered
the scalping-knife of the Indian and pinioned his
right arm to the ground, the latter, writhing beneath
his adversary with the flexibility of a serpent,
brought up his knee so near to his left hand as to
draw the leg-knife from beneath the garter, and
dealt Balt a blow in his side which nothing but his
hunting-shirt of tough elk-hide prevented from being
fatal. Even as it was, the weapon, after sliding
an inch or two, cut through the arrow-proof garment
that ere now had turned a sabre; while Balt, feeling
the point graze upon his ribs, thought that his
campaigning days were over, and, in the exasperation
of the moment, buried his knife to the hilt in
the bare bosom of Bronkahorlst.

“We are going together, old boy,” he cried, as
he sank back with a momentary faintness. “I only
hope we'll find the game as plenty in your hunting-ground
of spirits as we have on the banks of the
Sacondaga—God forgive me for being sich a heathen!”

But while this singular duel, with personal encounters
of a similar nature, were taking place in
one part of the field, others more eventful in their
consequences were transpiring elsewhere. The
puissant deeds of Captain Gardinier, like those of
Dillenback, have given his name a place upon the
sober page of history; but, as they involved the
fate of more than one of the personages of our story,
we have no hesitation in recapitulating them
here.

One principal cause, perhaps, why the Whigs
maintained their ground with such desperate tenacity,
was the hope that, so soon as the sound of
their firearms should reach the invested garrison of
Fort Stanwix, a sally would be attempted by the
besieged to effect a diversion in their favour. That
sally, so famous in our Revolutionary history, and
which gave to Willet, who conducted it, the name
of “the hero of Fort Stanwix,” did, in fact, take
place before the close of the battle of Oriskany, and
was, as we all know, attended with the most brilliant
success. But, long before the performance of
that gallant feat of Willet's, the Tory partisan, Colonel
Butler, aware of the hopes which animated his
Whig opponents at Oriskany, essayed a ruse de
guerre, which had wellnigh eventuated in their complete
destruction.

This wily officer, withdrawing a large detachment
of Johnson's Greens from the field of action,
partially disguised them as Republican troops by
making them change their hats for those of their
fallen enemies; and then adopting the patriot colours
and other party emblems as far as they could,
they made a circuit through the woods, and turned
the flank of the Whigs in the hope of gaining the
midst of them by coming in the guise of a timely
re-enforcement sent from the fort.

The hats of these soldiers appearing first through
the bushes, cheered Herkimer's men at once. The
cry was instantly raised that succour was at hand.
Many of the undisciplined yeomanry broke from
their stations, and ran to grasp the hands of their
supposed friends.

“Beware! beware! 'tis the enemy; don't you
see their green coats?” shouted Captain Gardinier,
whose company of dismounted rangers was nearest
to these new-comers. But, even as he spoke, one
of his own soldiers, a slight stripling, recognising
his own brother among the Greens, and supposing
him embarked in the same cause with himself,
rushed forward to embrace him. His outstretched
hand was seized with no friendly grasp by his hostile
kinsman; for the Tory brother, fastening a ferocious
gripe upon the credulous Whig, dragged him
within the opposing lines, exclaiming only, as he
flung him backward amid his comrades, “See, some
of ye, to the d—d young rebel, will ye?”

“For God's sake, brother, let them not kill me!
Do you not know me?” shrieked the youthful patriot,
as he clutched at one of those amid whom he
fell, to shield him from the blows that were straightway
aimed at his life.

But his brother had other work to engage him at
this instant; for the gallant Gardinier, observing
the action and its result, seized a partisan from a
corporal who stood near, and, wielding the spear like
a quarter staff, dealt his blows to the right and left
so vigorously that he soon beat back the disordered
group and liberated his man, who, clubbing his
rifle as he sprang to his feet, instantly levelled his
treacherous brother in the dust. But Gardinier and
his stripling soldier were now in the midst of the
Greens, unsupported by any of their comrades; and
the sturdy Major MacDonald, who this day had taken

duty with a detachment of Johnson's men, rushed
forward sword in hand to cut down Gardinier in
the same moment that two of the disguised Greens
sprang upon him from behind. Struggling with almost
superhuman strength to free himself from their
grasp, the spurs of the Whig Ranger became entangled
in the clothes of his adversaries, and he was
thrown to the ground. Both of his thighs were instantly
transfixed to the earth by the bayonets of
two of his assailants, while MacDonald, presenting
the point of his rapier to his throat, cried out to
“Yield himself, rescue or no rescue.” But Gardinier
did not yet dream of yielding.

Seizing the blade of the sword with his left hand,
the trooper, by a sudden wrench, brings the High-lander
down upon his own person, where he holds
him for a moment as a shield against the assault of
others. At this moment, Adam Miller for the first
time sees the struggle of Gardinier against this fearful
odds. His sword is already out and crimson
with the blood of more than one foe; and now,
rushing forward, he lays about him so industriously,
that the Greens are compelled to defend themselves
against their new adversary. Gardinier, raising
himself to a sitting posture, bears back MacDonald;
but the gallant Scot, still clinching the throat
of his foe with his left hand, braces himself firmly
on one knee, and turns to parry the phrensied blows
of Miller with his right. Gardinier has but one
hand at liberty, and that is lacerated by the rapier
which he had grasped so desperately; yet, quick
as light, he seizes the spear which is still lying near
him, and plants it to the barb in the side of MacDonald.
The chivalric Highlander expires without
a groan.

The Greens, struck with dismay at the fate of
this veteran officer, the near friend of Sir John

Johnson, fall back upon those of their comrades
who have not yet broken their ranks; while those
lookers-on, stung with grief for the loss of such an
officer, rally instantly to the charge, and pour in a
volley upon the Whigs, who have just succeeded in
dragging the wounded Gardinier out of the melée.
Severa fall, but their death is avenged on the instant;
yet dearly avenged, for the blow which follows,
while it terminates the battle, concludes the
existence of one of the most gallant spirits embarked
in it.

Young Derrick de Roos on that day had enacted
wonders of prowess. And though the rashness he exhibited
made his early soubriquet of “Mad Dirk” remembered
by more than one of his comrades, yet
he seemed somehow to bear a charmed life while
continually rushing to and fro wherever the fight
was hottest. At the very opening of the conflict,
when most of the mounted Rangers threw themselves
from their saddles and took to the bushes
with their rifles,[3] De Roos, with but a handful of
troopers to back him, drew his sword and charged
into the thickets from which came the first fire of
the ambushed foe.

“It is impossible for cavalry to act upon such
ground,” exclaimed an officer, seeing him about to
execute this mad movement. Do Roos, who, on
the march, was leading his horse, did not heed the
remark as he threw himself into the saddle. “Your
spurs—where are your spurs, man?” cried another,
as the horse, flurried by the first fire, rose on his

hinder legs instead of dashing forward. “Charge
not without your spurs, captain!”

“I'm going to win my spurs,” shouted Mad Dirk,
striking the flanks of the steed with the flat of his
sabre, which the next moment gleamed above his
head as the spirited animal, gathering courage from
his fiery rider, bounded forward in the charge.

In the instant confusion that followed, De Roos
was no more seen; the smoke, indeed, sometimes
revealed his orange plume floating like a tongue of
flame amid its wreaths; and his “Carry on, carry
on, men,” for a few moments cheered the ears of
the friends who could distinguish his gay and reckless
voice even amid the earnest shouts of the white
borderers, mingled as they were with the wild slogan
of the Indian warriors. But De Roos himself
appeared no more until, in the pause of the battle
already mentioned, he presented himself among his
compatriots, exclaiming,

“I've used up all my men! Is there no handful
of brave fellows here who will rally under Dirk de
Roos when we set-to again?”

The fearful slaughter which, as is known, took
place among Herkimer's officers at the very outset
of the fight, and almost with the first volley from
Brant's people, left men enough among those undisciplined
bands to furnish forth a stout array of volunteers,
who were eager to fight under so daring a
leader; and when the battle was renewed, the wild
partisan went into it with a train more numerous
than before. But his horse had long since been
killed under him; the followers upon whom he was
in the habit of relying had fallen, either dead or disabled,
by his side; and Derrick, somewhat sobered
in spirit, became more economical of his resources.
And, though still exposing his own person as much
as ever, he was vigilant in seeing that his men were

well covered, while he hoarded their energies to
strike some well-directed blow which might terminate
the battle.

With the last volley of the Greens he thought
the fitting moment had come. His bugle sounded
a charge, and on rushed his band with the bayonet.

“Carry on, carry on,” shouted De Roos, who
charged, sword in hand, a musket's length ahead of
his foremost files.

It seemed impossible for the weary royalists to
stand up against this column; for small in number
as were the men who composed it, they were comparatively
fresh, from a short breathing spell which they
had enjoyed; while their spirits were excited to the
utmost by their having been kept back by their officer
as he waited for the approaching crisis before
permitting a man to move. But the line of the
royalists, though broken and uneven, was still so
much longer than that of the patriots, that, outflanking
their assailants as they did, they had only to permit
their headlong foe to pass through, and then fall
upon his rear.

This movement the Greens effected with equal
alacrity and steadiness. Their ranks opened with
such quickness that they seemed to melt like a wave
before De Roos's impetuous charge; but, wavelike
too, they closed again behind his little band, which
was thus cut off from the patriot standard. Furious
at being thus caught in the toils, the fierce republicans
wheel again, and madly endeavour to cut their
way back to their friends; but the equally brave
royalists far outnumber them, and their fate for the
moment seems sealed, when suddenly another player
in this iron game presents himself.

Max Greyslaer, who, from a distance, has watched
the movement of his friend with the keenest
anxiety, sees the unequal struggle upon which the

fortunes of the whole battle are turning. He has
fought all day on foot, and, wounded and weary, he
seems too far from the spot upon which all the
chances of the fight are now concentred to reach it
ere they are decided. He looks eagerly around for
assistance; he shouts madly to those who are closer
to De Roos to press forward; and, bounding over a
fallen tree near him, he stumbles upon the trained
horse of a rifleman, which has been taught to crouch
in the thickets for safety. The couchant steed—
but now so quiet when masterless—rises with a
grateful winnow as Max seizes his bridle; and,
gladly yielding his back to so featly a rider, he
tosses his head with proud neighings as he feels
himself no longer a passive sharer in the dangers of
the field. On comes the gallant horse. The rider
gathers new life from the fresh spirits of his steed.
He sweeps—'twas thus the warlike saints of old
swept before the eyes of knightly combatants—he
sweeps meteor-like across the field, and charges
with his flashing brand, singly against the royal
host. Down goes the green banner of the Johnsons;
down goes the sturdy banner-man, shorn to
the earth by that trenchant blade.

The Greens, attacked thus impetuously in their
rear, turn partly round to confront this bold assailant;
but Greyslaer has already cloven his way
through their line, and Christian Lansingh, with a
score of active borderers, have rushed tumultuously
into his wake. The royalists are broken and forced
back laterally on either side of the pathway thus
made; but either fragment of the disjointed band
still struggles to reunite with desperate valour. The
republicans, concentrating their forces upon one at
a time, charge both parties alternately. Thrice
wheeling with the suddenness of a falcon in mid air,
has Greyslaer hurled himself upon their crumbling

ranks; and now, as one division is nearly annihilated
by that last charge, De Roos, emulous of his
friend, heads the onslaught against the remaining
fragment of the royalists. His orange plume again
floats foremost; and loud as when the fight was
new, his cheering voice is heard,

“Carry on, men, carry o—”

An Indian whoop—the last that was heard upon
the field of Oriskany—followed the single shot
which hushed that voice and laid that orange plume
in the dust.

Both Mohawks and royalists had already mostly
withdrawn from the field; and the remainder of the
Greens, who had contested it to the last so stubbornly,
retired when they saw De Roos fall.[4]

7. CHAPTER VII.
THE DOUBTFUL PARENTAGE.

Simms.

They were busy making rude litters for the
wounded upon that field of slaughter. The brave
Herkimer, who so soon died of his injury, was already
borne off; but most of his surviving followers
yet remained. There were groups of mournful
faces around the dying, and here and there a desolate-looking
man was seen stalking over the field,
pausing from time to time in his dreary quest, looking
around now with quick and painful glances, and
now, with a half-fearful air, stooping over some gory
corse, as if seeking some near friend or kinsman
among the fallen.

By the root of a dusky tamarack lay a bleeding
officer, whose pale features showed that he was yet
young in years; while another of similar age was
busied stanching the blood which oozed in torrents
from his side. A kneeling soldier offered a vessel
of water; a grizzly hunter held the feet of the dying
man in his bosom, as if to cherish the extremities
that were rapidly growing cold. A grave Indian
stood mutely looking on. If he indeed sorrows
in heart like the others, his smooth cheek and quiet

eye betray not the agitation which paints their faces
with emotion.

It is of no avail, the kindness of that ministering
group of friends. The dying man, indeed, once
opens his eyes, and he seems to murmur something,
which the other officer bends forward with the most
earnest solicitation to hear. He seems to have
some charge or bequest of wishes to make to his
friend; but his thoughts cannot syllable themselves
into connected utterance. His wound seems to
gather virulence from each successive effort; yet
still he squanders his remaining strength in futile
attempts to communicate with his friends. Alas!
why did he not speak before, that luckless soldier,
if life's last moments were so precious to him?

“I know—I know—it is of Guise, the Indian
child, you would speak,” cried the agonized friend,
as the sudden thought started into his mind. “It is
the mystery of his birth—it is your wishes about
your own offspring that you would declare. God of
Heaven, pardon and spare him for a moment. Press
my hand, Derrick, if I have guessed truly that the
child is yours; make any—the least, the feeblest
sign, and your boy shall be as dear to Greyslaer as
his own.”

But Derrick died and gave no sign! His last
breath went out in the moment that his agitated
friend, for the first time, conjectured what he intended
to reveal.

They buried him beneath that dusky tamarack;
and there let him lay, a gallant, frank-hearted soldier,
whose bravery and generosity of disposition
will be remembered in his native valley long after
the blemishes, or, rather, the inherent defects of his
character are forgotten; a character not altogether
inestimable, far less unloveable, at that graceful season
of life when the wildest sallies of youth are forgotten

in the generous impulses which seem to
prompt them, but which, unregulated by one steadfast
principle, is perhaps, of all others, the most
likely to degenerate into utter profligacy and selfishness
when age shall have chilled the social flow of
its feelings, and habit confirmed the reckless indulgence
of its own humours.

It was well, then, perhaps, for the memory of the
gay and high-spirited De Roos, that his career closed
as it did; but the sorrowing group who are now
retiring from his hastily-made grave would spurn
the solace which such a reflection might impart.
The three white men have scattered twigs and tufts
of grass over the spot before they leave it; and they
turn to see why the Indian still lingers behind them;
an exclamation of displeasure, as at beholding some
heathen rite, bursts from the lips of Greyslaer as he
sees a column of smoke arise from a pile of brush
which Teondetha has already heaped together.

“The pagan Redskin, what is he doing?” muttered
Christian Lansingh.

“Teondetha is wise,” said Balt, sadly, in the only
words of kindness he had ever spoken to the young
chief. “He has preserved all that remains of poor
Captain Dirk; for the wild beasts will never scratch
through the ashes to disturb him.”

The Indian replied not, and they all left the battle-field
in silence.

Tradition tells of the horrid spectacle which that
field exhibited three days afterward, when the
wolves, the bears, and the panthers, with which the
adjacent forests at that time abounded, had been
busy among the graves of the slain; but the simple
precaution of Teondetha preserved from violation
the last resting-place of the friend of his boyhood.

Of the others that fell in this ensanguined conflict,
it belongs to history rather than to us to speak.

The annalist of Tryon county[5] tells us, that in the
whole Valley of the Mohawk there was scarcely a
family which had not lost some member; scarcely a
man, woman, or child who had not some relative to
deplore after the fatal field of Oriskany. Brant's
warriors had suffered so severely that his immediate
band of Mohawks was nearly all cut to pieces; but,
deeply as the chieftain grieved for the loss of his
brave followers, he had still room in his heart to
lament his friend MacDonald. At this point we
shall probably take leave of the famous Sachem,
whose career, though it grows more and more thrilling
in interest through the successive scenes of the
civil war along this border, is haply no farther interwoven
with the thread of our narrative.

Teondetha, too, though he may possibly again
flit across our page, we must now dismiss with his
Oneidas to the ancient seats of his people, where
they finally halted after cruelly harassing the rear
of the flying St. Leger. That officer, as is known,
broke up his lines before Fort Stanwix upon Arnold's
approach to Fort Dayton, and effected a most disastrous
retreat to the wilds from which he had
emerged with such boastful anticipations. Of the
officers to whom the arduous duty of pursuing him
into the wilderness was intrusted, few were more
distinguished for zeal and efficiency than Major
Greyslaer, whose knowledge of forest life enabled
him to co-operate to the greatest advantage with
the Oneida allies of the patriot cause.

Returning from this arduous and perilous service,
Greyslaer, when halting to refresh his men at the
Oneida Castle, had an opportunity of witnessing the
wedded happiness of “The Spreading Dew,” who
was long since united to her true warrior, and who
welcomed him with proud feelings of gratification

to her husband's lodge. He sympathized with the
fortunate issue of their simple loves, even while he
sighed to think that the course of his own, which
had never run too smoothly, was still far from
bright.

It was impossible for him to be near Alida in the
first days of her grief, when the tidings should reach
her that her only brother, the last male of her family,
the last near relation she had on earth, had been
taken away; but he had promised himself that many
weeks should not elapse before she should find a
comfort in the society of one who would leave no
means untried that kindness could suggest to alleviate
her sorrows; who would in all things endeavour
to supply the place of him who could return
no more. And, truly, if the ever-watchful consideration,
the tender and fostering care, the minute and
gentle offices of affection suggested by a heart of
inborn delicacy and feeling—if these cherishing
ministrations at the hands of a stranger to our blood
can ever supply the loss of a natural tie, Max Greyslaer
was the man of all others whose sympathies
would be most balmful at such a season. Alida
herself, though in the first agony of her grief she
would have shrunk from communion even with
Greyslaer, yet, when the paroxysm had passed
away, looked naturally to her lover—the earliest
and closest friend of the brother she had lost—as
her best consoler; and she yearned for his appearance
by her side with that impatience of disappointment
or delay which, though chiefly characteristic
of poor Derrick's impetuous and irrestrainable disposition,
was in no slight degree shared as a family
trait by his sister. But the day was far distant
when the lovers were again to meet; and Destiny
had strange things in store for them ere that meeting,

now so eagerly desired by either, was to be
brought about.

The greater part of the patriot troops employed
against St. Leger had been marched off to oppose
Burgoyne, whose invasion along the Hudson was
destined to be equally unsuccessful with that upon
the Mohawk. The fate of Major Greyslaer did not
lead him to have a share in the glorious operations
of Schuyler and Gates; while the large force which
had thus been withdrawn from the Valley of the
Mohawk, rendering the utmost vigilance necessary
in those who were left to guard it, made it impossible
for an officer of his standing and importance
to be absent on furlough at such a season.

As the autumn came on, he found himself posted
at Fort Stanwix, where new works were to be erected
to strengthen a frontier position which late events
had proved to be so all important to the preservation
of the province.

The winter set in, and his prospect of seeing
Alida was still farther postponed. The spring arrived
at last; and what were the hopes it brought
with its blossoms, when Greyslaer was about to
avail himself at last of a long-promised furlough?

The letters of Alida, meanwhile, had long breathed
a spirit which filled him with anxiety. They
had become more and more brief; and, though not
cold precisely, there was yet something formal in
their tenour, as if their writer were gradually falling
back upon the old terms of friendship which had so
long been their only acknowledged relation of regard.
It seemed as if some new and deeper sorrow
had fixed upon her heart; some weight of misery
which even he could not remove. She did not
complain; she made no mention of any specific
cause of grief, but she spoke as one whose hopes
were no longer of this world.

At first Greyslaer thought that it was the death
of her brother which had thus preyed upon her spirits;
and his replies to her letters bore the tenderest
sympathy with her sorrows as he united in mourning
over the early-closed career of his gallant and
high-spirited friend. But, dearly as she loved Derrick,
his name now was never mentioned by Alida!
Could it be that her health was failing? Was the
grave, then, about to yawn between Greyslaer and
his hopes, to swallow them up for ever? And did
Alida wish thus gradually to wean him from the
wild idolatry which had been the passion of his
life? to prepare him for the passing away of his
idol?

He thought, with terror, that it must be so.
There was a tone of serious religious sentiment, a
character of meekness and humility in some of her
letters, wholly foreign to her once proud and fervid
spirit. It was the tone of one who had ceased to
struggle with and rebel against her lot; who had
yielded her spirit to the guidance of Him who gave
it, and who waited in humble patience for the moment
of its recall.

“Yes,” said Greyslaer on the day that he was at
last to be relieved from his military duties, as he
read one of those passages in an agony of emotion,
with which something of solace was still intermingled,
“yes, she feels herself fading into the grave.
Consumption—yet Alida's is not the soul to crumble
beneath disease! This new-born gentleness can
only have been imparted from above. Her bright
spirit is gathering from on high the only grace it
lacked to fit it for that blessed sphere. She is fading—fading
away from me for ever.” His eyes
were strained on vacancy as he spoke, and he stood
with arms wildly outstretched, as if to arrest some

beloved phantom which seemed melting before
them.

The starting tears had scarcely filled those eyes,
when a comrade, abruptly breaking into his quarters,
told a tale which congealed them with horror
where they stood. The whole nature of Max
Greyslaer, the gentle, the high-minded, was changed
within him from that very moment.

And what was the monstrous tale that wrought
this change upon a mind so well attempered, a soul
so steadfast, a heart so true in all that can approve
its worth as was that of Greyslaer? Has fortune
still a test in store to prove the love that never wavered?
Has fate, from her black quiver, thrown a
shaft that even love itself, in all its panoply, can
not repel?

We are now approaching a part of our story that
we would fain pass over as rapidly as possible, for
the details are most painful; so painful, so revolting,
in fact, that we cannot bring ourselves to do
more than touch upon them while hurrying on to
the catastrophe which they precipitated.

Walter Bradshawe, as we have seen, was convicted
as a spy, and received sentence of death; but
a mistaken lenity prompted his reprieve before the
hour of execution arrived. When removed to Albany,
he was at first closely imprisoned for several
months; but the secret Tories, with which the capital
of the province at that time abounded, found
means of mitigating the rigours of his confinement,
and even of enlisting a strong interest in his behalf
among some of the most influential inhabitants.
Bradshawe, before the Revolution, had mingled intimately
in the society of the place, and his strongly-marked
character had made both friends and
enemies in the social circle. His present political
situation increased the number of both, and both

were now equally active in the endeavour to preserve
or crush him. The royalists, willing to keep
politics entirely out of view, appealed only to private
and personal feelings of old association in pleading
for his safety. Some of the patriots sternly rejected
all reference to a state of things which had
passed away, and would see only a Tory malignant
and detected spy in their former neighbour. But
others accepted the issue which was offered by the
friends of the criminal, and indignantly insisted that
there was nothing in his private character which
should make him a fit subject for mercy. The
whole career of his life was ripped up from the
time when, as a law student at Albany, he was
known as one of the most riotous and reckless
youths of the period—through the opening scenes
of the Revolution, when his insolent and scandalous
conduct, on more than one occasion, had exasperated
the minds of men against the official profligate—
through those which followed the outbreak of civil
discord, when his aid or connivance was more than
suspected to many a deed of ruthless violence, of
midnight burning, of bloodshed and cruelty—down
to the present time, when he stood a convicted
criminal, whose life had been most justly forfeited.

Men stop at nothing when their minds are once
excited in times so phrensied as these; and the
whole story of the abduction of Miss De Roos was
brought up as testimony against Bradshawe's character,
with every particular exaggerated, and the
outrage painted in every colour which could inspire
horror at its enormity.

Rumours of Greyslaer's approaching nuptials
with the unhappy lady who was thus made the general
subject of conversation, reached the ears of
Bradshawe while chafing beneath these charges,
and the thought of the misery they would inflict

upon his victims might have been sufficient even
for his revengeful spirit; but he determined, with a
hellish ingenuity, to fling the imputation of the outrage
from himself, and, at the same time, to plant
its stigma in an exaggerated form upon her whose
name had been so recklessly dragged in by his persecutors.
He first set afloat insinuations in regard
to the parentage of the half-blood Indian boy who
had long been an inmate of the family at the Hawksnest,
and who had more than once visited Albany
under the care of Alida, whom the child so much
resembled! And then he boldly proclaimed, that,
so far from instituting the alleged abduction of Miss
De Roos, he had only, out of respect for her connexions,
aided in withdrawing her from the protection
of Isaac Brant, to whom she had fled from her
father's halls!

A conviction of the nature of the feelings, the
tortured and blasted feelings which had prompted
the tone of Alida's letters, flashed electric upon the
mind of her lover at this horrid recital; and at
thought of that lady, most deject and wretched, his
noble and most sovereign reason—to which religion
had ever been the handmaid—was quite o'erthrown:
“The soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword, quite
—quite down.”

In a word, Max Greyslaer, as we have already
said—Max, the gentle, the high-minded, became
changed in soul on the instant. The prayerful
spirit of one short hour ago vanished before the new
divinity that usurped its place upon the altar of his
heart. His dream of submission to the will of Providence—the
tearful resignation which his belief in
Alida's illness inspired, was over, lost, swallowed
up, obliterated in the wild tempest of his passions.
The fierce lust of vengeance shot through his veins
and agitated every fibre of his system; a horrid

craving seized his heart—the craving for the blood
of a human victim! And had Bradshawe stood
near, gifted with a hundred lives, Greyslaer could
one by one have torn them all from out his mortal
frame.

The object of his vengeance was far away, but
Max Greyslaer from that moment was not less in
thought—a MURDERER!

8. CHAPTER VIII.
THE AVENGER'S JOURNEY.

—Drake.

An acute observer of human nature has remarked,
that there are seasons when a man differs not less
from himself than he does at other times from all
other men; and certain it is that passion will often,
with the magic of a moment, work a change in the
character which the blind pressure of circumstance
throughout long years—the moulding habits of an
ordinary lifetime, with all their plastic power above
the human heart, could never have wrought in the
same individual who undergoes this sudden transformation.

An hour had passed away with Greyslaer; an
hour of phrensied feeling. And one such hour is
enough, with a man of deep, intense, and concentrated
feelings, for the gust of passion to subside
into the stern calmness of resolve. The soldier
who was sent to summon him to the mess-table reported
that Major Greyslaer's quarters were vacant.
The soldier had passed the major's servant on his
way thither to pack up and put away his things, as

if his master were likely to be long absent. The
servant himself came the next moment to say, that
his master, being suddenly called away from the
post, would not dine with the mess that day. His
brother officers, though knowing that their popular
comrade had lately received a long-expected furlough,
were still surprised at this abrupt departure;
and one or two of them left their seats and hurried
out to the stables. Greyslaer stood there with a
cloak and valise over his arm, superintending in person
the equipment of his horse for a long journey.
His cheek was pale, his eye looked sunken, and his
aspect altogether was that of one who had for the
first time ventured forth after a long and serious ill-ness;
yet there was no fever about his eyes; they
were rather, indeed, dull, cold, and glassy.

The officers, who simultaneously uttered a cry
of surprise at the strange alteration in the appearance
of their friend since the morning, were—they
hardly knew why—instantly silenced by Greyslaer's
manner as he turned round to answer their salutation.
They had come there, impelled by motives
of friendly curiosity, to ask why he broke away so
suddenly from their society. They now stood as
if they had forgotten their errand; mute lookers-on,
whom some mysterious influence withheld from expressing
their emotions even by a sympathetic glance
with each other. When all was ready, Greyslaer
threw himself into the saddle, murmured something
about his having already taken his leave of the colonel,
and, as the two officers thought they remembered
afterward, left some words of kind farewell
for others of the mess. But the ghastly appearance
of Greyslaer, the icy coldness of the hand he gave
them to shake, and his strangely unnatural and
statue-like appearance as he slowly moved off unattended,
struck a chilling amazement into the hearts

of his friends, that left them perfectly stupified for
the moment. They had broken away from the table
to take a cordial farewell of one whose generous,
soldierly temperament, not less than his brilliant
social qualities, had made him the pride and
delight of the mess. The marble figure with which
they but now parted wore, indeed, the lineaments of
their friend, but was a perfect stranger to their
hearts. The very voice, they swore, never did belong
to Max Greyslaer. As for the soldiers, many
of whom were recruited from among the superstitious
Scotch and German settlers of the neighbouring
mountains, they fully believed that some evil
spirit of the heathenish Indians had wrought this
sudden and mysterious change in the whole look
and bearing of their favourite officer; and, alas! it
was but too true that the direst of pagan deities had
taken up her abode in the heart of Max Greyslaer.

In the mean time, the horseman, who furnished
so earnest a theme for those whom he had left behind,
slowly but steadily pursued his journey. His
horse, from the regular, mechanical gait he adopted,
seemed to know that a long road was before him.
The patient roadster and his motionless rider were
long seen from the battlements of Fort Stanwix,
though the evening shadows of the adjacent woods
snatched them more than once from view before
they finally glided like an apparition into the silent
forest.

There was no moon, but the stars shone brightly
above him as Greyslaer crossed the fatal field of
Oriskany. His horse snuffing the air, which, in the
warm, moist night of teeming springtime, stole out
from the tainted earth, first reminded him of the
scene of slaughter over which he was riding. He
passed the tree beneath which the remains of De
Roos had been laid. He did not shudder. He gave

no tear to the recollection of the past; neither did
one thought arise to rebuke the memory of his early
friend for present sorrows. He did not even envy
him the repose of his woodland grave. He only
looked coldly upon the spot as a mere landmark of
Fate, where one breathing being, warm with life
and intelligence, had found his allotted bourne; and
why ponder upon a doom common to all—fixed,
predetermined, and to which he himself, as he believed,
was then moving at such a cold, passionless
pace?

It was long after midnight before Greyslaer halted,
and it was then only for the purpose of refreshing
his horse. The dawn found him again upon his
journey, and, by changing his steed for a fresher one,
he reached the Hawksnest before evening. His
original determination led him direct to Albany,
where Bradshawe was still under durance; but
when he found himself in the neighbourhood of his
homestead, and obliged to halt for a few hours from
the impossibility of getting another relay, he felt
himself irresistibly prompted to make a secret visit
to the premises. He did not intend to have an interview
with Alida, but he must look upon the house
which held her.

He approached the domain, and all was silent.
It was too early yet, perhaps, for lights to show
through the casement; but, if there had been any
there, Greyslaer could not have seen them, for every
shutter seemed closed. There was no smoke from
the chimneys, around which the swallows clustered,
as huddling there to an unmolested roost. Max had
never seen the home of his fathers look so desolate.
With quickening pace he advanced to the hall door
and tried the latch; but in vain, for the bolts had
been drawn within. He knocked, and the sound
came hollowly to his ears, as we always fancy it

does from an untenanted mansion. He walked to
the end of the verandah, and, glancing rapidly round
among the outhouses, which stood off at one wing
of the main building, observed some poultry at
roost among a cluster of pear and locust trees which
nearly encircled the kitchen. Their presence suggested
him to apply to the only spot where these
feathered dependants could now look for their food.
He approached the kitchen—a small, Dutch-built
building of brick—and rapped against the window
before trying the door. A gray-headed negress,
protruding her head through a narrow window in
one of the gables, at length greeted his ears with
the sound of a human voice.

“Who's dere?” she cried, in a quick tone of
alarm.

“It is I—Master Max, Dinah.”

“Lorrah massy, be't you for sartain, or only your
spook?”

“No spook, my good Dinah, but my living self.
Come down and let me in.”

“Me mighty glad to see you, massy,” said the
negress, lighting a candle, after she had unbolted
the door to Greyslaer; “for Dinah go to bed when
they leib her all alone, so that she not see the spook.
But, Lorrah, Mass Max, how berry old he look.
He pale, too, as spook,” added the slave, shading
the candle partly with her hand as she peered into
her young master's features.

“But where are all my people? Where is
Miss—”

“De boys—all de boys, massy, has gone to de
village to hold corn-dance for seedtime. De housekeeper,
you know, lib at de oberseer's down in the
lane eber since she shut up the great house after
Miss Alida went away.”

“And where has Miss Alida gone?” said Greyslaer,

with unnatural calmness, as he caught hold of
the back of a chair to steady himself; for, of a
truth, he for a moment feared that Alida, stung to
madness by the cruel nature of her sorrows, might
have hurried upon some tragic fate, he scarcely
knew what.

The answer of the old servant took an instant
load from his bosom. Miss Alida, she said, had
taken the little boy with her and gone to Albany
near a month since. “She grew thin and looked
mighty sorrowful before she went, and it made our
hearts bleed to see her, Mass Max,” said the faithful
black; “and, though we were all cast down like
when we saw her pack up her things to go away,
yet we thought it might be better for young missus
to go where there were more white folks to cheer
her up.”

Greyslaer made no answer, but, asking for the
key of the house, lighted a stable-lantern, and telling
Dinah that he should not want her attendance,
entered the deserted house. He gained the parlour,
which had beheld the last ill-omened parting of the
lovers, so sad yet so sweet withal. The room looked
much the same as when last he left it, save that
there were no fresh-gathered flowers upon the mantelpiece,
and some few slight articles belonging to
Alida had been removed. He placed the lantern
upon a table and opened its door; for the flickering
light, dancing upon one or two portraits with which
the walls were hung, gave them a sort of fitful life
that was annoying. He wished to realize fully that
he was alone. He looked around to see if there
were no memento or trace of the last hours which
Alida had passed in the same chamber. A little
shawl, thrown carelessly across the arm of a sofa,
met his eye. He took it up, looked at it, and knew
it to be Alida's. It had probably been flung there

and forgotten in the hasty moment of departure.
Greyslaer had never been what, in modern parlance,
is called “a lady's man;” and though he could sometimes
tell one article of dress from another, he was
wholly unskilled in the effeminate knowledge and
toilet-like arts which distinguish that enviable class
of our sex. It was curious, therefore, to see him
stand and fold this scarf with the utmost nicety and
neatness. He handled it, indeed, like something
precious; and, from the delicacy with which he
pressed it to his lips before placing it in his bosom,
he seemed to imagine the senseless fabric imbued
with life; but all his motions now were like those of
one who moves in a dream.

At last he took up the lantern to retire from the
apartment, so desolate in itself, yet peopled with so
many haunting memories. A letter, which had been
unobserved when he placed it there, lay beneath it.
Max read the superscription. It was adressed to
himself, and in the handwriting of Alida. He
broke the seal, and read as follows:

The features of Greyslaer betrayed no emotion
as he read this letter the first, the second, and even
the third time, for thrice did he peruse it before he
became fully master of its contents; and even then,
from the vacant gaze which he fixed upon its characters,
it would seem as if his mind were by no
means earnestly occupied with what it contained.
He laid it down upon the table, paced to and fro
leisurely through the chamber, paused, took up
some trivial article from the mantelpiece, examined
it, and replaced it as carefully as if his thoughts
were intent only upon the trifles of the moment.
He returned to the table, took up the letter, and
slightly shivering as he came to the close of it, turned
his eyes upward, while the paper, which he held
at arm's length, trembled in his hands as if he were
suddenly seized with an ague-fit. “God of heaven!”
he cried, “I cannot, I dare not pray; yet thou
only—” he paused, and shuddered still more frightfully,

as his lips seemed almost unwittingly about
to syllable the prayerful thoughts which, rising from
a heart tenanted as his was by a murderer's vow,
would be a mockery, an insult to Heaven. Tears
—the first resource of woman, the last relief of man
—burst that moment from his eyes, and alleviated
a struggle so powerful as to threaten instant madness
to its half-convulsed subject. The sufferer
buried his face in his hands, and, throwing himself
on the sofa, wept long and passionately. Let no
man sneer at his weakness, unless he has once loved
as did Greyslaer; unless that love has been blasted
as his was; unless he has felt himself the victim of
an iron destiny, when the heart, softened by years
of unchanging tenderness, was least fitted to bear
up under the doom to which he must yield! Greyslaer
knew the singular firmness, the inflexible determination
of Alida's character. He believed, as
she did, that it was now impossible to wipe away
the reproach that attached to her name. She had
declared her resolution. He felt that he would see
her no more.

And was there, then, it may be asked, no doubt
in the mind of Max, no shadowy but still poignant
doubt, no latent and subtile suspicion of the truth
of his mistress? No momentary weighing of testimony
as to what might be the real circumstances
of Alida's story?

Not one! ever—for a moment—not one disloyal
thought to the majesty of her virtue; not one blaspheming
doubt to the holiness of her truth; no,
never—never, for the breath of an instant, had an unhallowed
suspicion of Alida's maiden purity crossed
the mind of her lover! Greyslaer himself was all
truth and nobleness! How could so mean and miserable
a thought have found entrance into a soul
like his, regarding one as high-strung as itself, and

with which it had once mingled in full and rich
accord? Besides, the love of a feeling and meditative
mind; the love that, born in youth, survives
through the perilous trials of early manhood, with
all the warm yet holy flush of its dawn tincturing
its fondness, and all the soberer and fuller light of
its noontide testing without impairing its esteem—
such a love becomes as much a part of a man's nature,
mingles as intimately with his being, as the
very life-blood that channels through his veins; and
to doubt the purity of her who inspires it were as
deathful as to admit a poison into the vital fluids of
his system. Such love may languish in hopelessness,
may wither in despair, may die at last—like
the winter-starved bird of Indian fable, who melted
into a song, which, they say, is still sometimes heard
in his accustomed haunts—but it never can admit
one moment's doubt of the worthiness of its object.

The gush of passionate emotion to which the unhappy
Max had abandoned himself, had at last its
end. And as these were the first tears which he
had shed in years—for his phrensied ravings in the
hour when he first received the cruel blow to his
happiness had had no such relief—they were followed
by a calmness of mind far more natural than
that which he had recently known. Even the old
negress, who had sat up watching for him, pipe in
mouth, by the kitchen-fire, where she had raked a
few embers together, could not but observe the difference
in his appearance while commenting upon
the fixed air of sadness which her young master
still wore. Greyslaer, who, even at such a time,
was not forgetful of the humble dependants upon
his bounty, handed the old woman a few shillings
to replenish her store of tobacco, the only luxury
left to her age and infirmity; and, leaving a trifle or
two for the other servants, took a kind leave of old

Dinah, and returned to the inn where he had left his
horse. The gray of the morning found him once
more upon the road; and before sunset the spires
of Schenectady, the last village he was to pass
through before reaching Albany, rose to his view.
But we must now leave him to look after other personages
of our story.

9. CHAPTER IX.
THE NIGHT ATTEMPT.

—J. K. Mitchell.

Walter Bradshawe, whose long incarceration
at Albany has been already commemorated, had,
through the intercession of friends and the clemency
of those in power, been transferred from the common
jail of the town where he was first imprisoned,
to a sort of honorary durance in the guarded
chamber of an ordinary dwelling-house.

The building in which he was now confined was
situated near the water-side, in the upper part of the
town, having a garden in the rear running down to
the quay. The room appropriated to Bradshawe
was in the second story, at the back of the house,
and immediately at the head of the first flight of
stairs. At the foot of this staircase, and within a
few yards of the outer door, which opened upon the
street, was posted a sentinel.

As month after month flew by, and still greater
indulgences were granted to Bradshawe with the
prolongation of his imprisonment, the duty of this
sentinel became at last so much a matter of mere
form, that it was customary often to place a new recruit
with a musket in his hands in the place which
was, in the first instance, occupied by some veteran
soldier of trust and confidence. This relaxation of
vigilance was, of course, not unobserved by the

friends of the prisoner, if, in fact, it was not procured
by their agency; and, upon intelligence being
conveyed to Valtmeyer how things were situated,
he immediately planned the escape of Bradshawe,
and selected a shrewd and trusty follower (an old
acquaintance of the reader) to assist him in the project.

Syl Stickney, therefore, according to previous arrangement,
succeeded in making his way into the
city of Albany in the guise of a Helderberg peasant;
and, after lounging about the streets for a few days,
he allowed himself to be picked up by a sergeant's
patrol, and carried to a recruiting station, where,
without much difficulty, he was persuaded to enlist
in the patriot army. Valtmeyer, in the mean time,
hovered around the outskirts of the town, and was
advised of all Stickney's movements through the
agency of several disaffected persons of condition,
who, though in secret among the most active
partisans of the royal cause, still kept up appearances
sufficiently to enjoy an easy position in society,
and who had almost daily access to the prisoner
upon the mere footing of fashionable acquaintance.

Many days had not passed before the Helderberg
recruit was placed as sentinel before the door
of Bradshawe's quarters, and it was easily ascertained
when his tour of duty would come round a
second time. Valtmeyer was on the alert to avail
himself of the opportunity.

Entering the city of Albany by the southern suburbs,
this daring partisan succeeded one night in
throwing himself, with a party of followers as desperate
as himself, into a stable which stood near the
edge of the river, where they lay concealed in the
hayloft through the whole of the following day.
With the approach of the next evening—the time

fixed upon for the proposed rescue—a canoe, paddled
by a single negro, crept along the bank of the
river from the islands below, and was moored within
a few yards of the stable. This canoe was appropriated
to the escape of Bradshawe; but the
plotting brain of Valtmeyer, which could not remain
idle during the long hours that he was obliged to
lie quiet in his lurking-place, contrived a still farther
use for it.

The stable in which he chanced to have taken
post was situate at the foot of a garden upon the
premises occupied by a zealous Whig, and one of
the most efficient members of the Albany Council
of Safety, being a man, indeed, whose firmness,
vigilance, and unwearied activity in the Whig cause
made him second only to General Schuyler among
the most valuable citizens of Albany in those times.
Mr. Taylor—for that energetic Revolutionary partisan
and subsequently distinguished civilian was
the person in question—was particularly obnoxious
to the Johnson family for the part he had acted in
expelling some of its members from the province;
and the daring genius of Valtmeyer kindled with
the idea of conveying him off a captive to Sir John.
In fact, though the success of Bradshawe's escape
must be endangered by connecting it with such an
attempt, yet Valtmeyer, when, from his lurking-place,
he several times throughout the day caught
sight of the Whig councillor moving about, unconscious
of danger, over his own grounds, could not
resist the temptation.

The famous Joe Bettys, who had associated himself
with this expedition, did his best to dissuade
his daring comrade from this project until they got
the head of Bradshawe fairly out of the lion's mouth;
but Valtmeyer insisted that no time was so fit as
the present; for, the moment that Bradshawe was
missed, such precautions would be taken that they

could not venture into so perilous a neighbourhood
again. He knew, he said, that Bradshawe would
damn him if he let such a chance go by. It was
agreed, therefore, that Bettys should go alone to
guide Bradshawe down to the boat, where Valtmeyer
promised that he would meet him with his
prisoner when the turning of the tide should enable
them to drop down the stream most easily.

The attempt to seize Mr. Taylor—as we know
from the annals of the period—failed through one
of those incidents which, seeming so trivial in themselves,
are still so important in their consequences
that they cannot but be considered providential.
But the results of that failure are most intimately
connected with the course of our story.

The clock of the old Dutch church, which stood
in the centre of State-street, struck the hour of midnight
when Bettys departed to attend to his share
in the perilous operations of the night. Leaving
him, for the present, to make his way to the quarters
of Bradshawe, we must in the mean while attend
to the proceedings of his brother brigand.

It was the intention of Valtmeyer to effect an entrance
into Mr. Taylor's house with as little disturbance
as possible, and to seize and bear away the
master of the household to the canoe at the foot of
his garden. But, though the family had, from appearances,
already retired for the night, he meant to
defer the attempt until Bettys had made good his retreat
to the water-side with Bradshawe. It chanced,
however, that scarcely ten minutes after Bettys had
left his comrades, their attention was excited by a
noise at the door in the rear of the house which
precipitated their movements.

A chain falling, the clanging of an iron bar, and
the grating of a heavy bolt as it was withdrawn,
showed that the only door through which they could
hope for ingress was guarded and secured by precautions

which, though not unusual in private buildings
at that period, seem not to have been anticipated
by Valtmeyer in the present instance. There
was evidently some one about to come out into the
yard. Valtmeyer hoped that it might be the councillor
himself; if not, he determined, in any event,
that the occasion must not be lost of effecting an
entrance through the open door.

Age or caution seemed to make the forthcoming
person very slow in his movements; but the door
moved at last upon its hinges, and the dull light of
a stable lantern falling across the threshold, revealed
only the form of an old black servant, who, with
creeping step, was moving forward into the yard.

The Tories, thinking the moment for action had
arrived, sprang impetuously forward to seize the negro.
But, though the sudden rush had nearly effected
their object, the movement was premature; for
the negro, startled at the first noise of their onset,
dropped his lantern, scuttled back across the threshold,
and shot the bolt of the door just as the foremost
assailant reached it. Valtmeyer gnashed his
teeth with rage as he heard the faithful fellow tugging
at the chain and bar, still farther to secure it
within, while his cries at the same time summoned
the family to his aid. The next moment there
came a pistol-shot from a window; and the Tories,
seeing now that the whole neighbourhood would be
alarmed, retreated to the boat as rapidly as possible.

The canoe was easily gained; but now what to
do in the predicament in which he had placed himself,
puzzled even the fertile brain of Valtmeyer.
To remain where he was, exposed all his party to
seizure, for the whole town must be alarmed in a
very few moments; yet to depart at once must jeopard,
fatally perhaps, the lives of both Bradshawe
and Bettys, not to mention that of the false sentinel,
who, it was supposed, would come off with

them. Valtmeyer did not hesitate long; and his
decision, though attended with no benefit to his absent
allies, was still the best that could be made in
the premises. He determined to lighten his canoe,
and, at the same time, effect a diversion in case of
pursuit, by sending all his followers, save himself,
to make their retreat along the river's bank by land,
in the same way they had entered the town. He
then, with wary paddle, commenced creeping along
shore up the river, so as to approach the place of
Bradshawe's confinement, which was toward the
other extremity of the town.

Let us now follow the doughty Joe Bettys upon
his mission.

The duty of this worthy confrere of Valtmeyer,
though perilous, was sufficiently plain. He had
only to ascertain that the Tory sentinel was at his
post, and make him aware that he himself was near,
when Bradshawe, who knew the minutest arrangement
of the plot for his relief, would at once emerge
from his quarters and follow Bettys' guidance.
Their first movement would be to make for the
river; for there lay their means of escape, and there
the piles of timber, of which Albany was ever a
great mart, afforded the best opportunity for present
concealment, if it should be necessary.

And thus, indeed, every circumstance, like those
of a well-rehearsed play, might have succeeded each
other, were it not for the intrusion of a most unexpected
actor upon the scene.

The first intimation which Bettys had of such
interference was from the stupid exclamation of surprise
which his appearance drew from the disguised
sentinel as he encountered him upon entering
the hall. Stickney, who might have just awakened
from a nap upon a bench which stood near,
was supporting his staggering limbs against the bannister,

and seemed to be listening, half awake, to
some noise in the room at the head of the stairs.
Upon the entrance of Bettys, he turned round sharply,
and, catching at his musket, which leaned against
the wall, seemed disposed to dispute the passage
with him.

“Softly, Syl,” cried the wary Joe; “you needn't
act the drunken man so far as to run me through
by mistake. Why, zounds! the infernal rascal's
dead-drunk in earnest; sewed up completely, by—,”
he added, with an angry oath, as he advanced and
collared him.

“Aint in liquor—more—than—my—duty—re—
quires,” hiccoughed Sylla; “for didn't I see—you
—with my—eyes—shut—come in that door and go
up stairs—but ten minutes—ago?”

“Me—me, you lying, drunken rascal! Saw me?
Answer quickly, or I'll shake the life out of you.”

“If I didn't, may I never—touch—a drop of good
liquor again. By Goy!” ejaculated Stickney, finishing
his asseverations with a stupid stare, “I believe
I am drunk; for, if this be raally Leftenant Joe Bettys,
I've seen double at least once to-night. The
fellow that went up stairs—”

Bettys waited to hear no more, but hurled his sottish
follower from him with a force that sent him
reeling to the farther end of the hall. The noise the
man made in falling brought the owner of the mansion
instantly to his door; but he only opened it
far enough to thrust out his head, and cast a furtive
and anxious glance at Bettys as the latter rushed
up the stairs, when, seeming to think for the moment
that all was right, he drew back and locked
his apartment. And we too must now leave Bettys
upon the threshold of Bradshawe's room, to look
after another of those who were most deeply concerned
in the deeds of this eventful night.

10. CHAPTER X.
THE RENCONTRE.

—Whittier.

It chanced, then, that, in the very hour appointed
for carrying into execution the bold project which
we have thus far traced, that Max Greyslaer, bent
on his errand of murderous vengeance, entered the
city of Albany by the Schenectady road, and, leaving
his horse at a wagoner's inn in the suburbs,
penetrated on foot into the heart of the town. He
had possessed himself, while at Schenectady, of every
particular relating to the place of Bradshawe's
imprisonment, and of the nature of the guard that
was kept over him; and, fevered with impatience to
accomplish the one fatal object which had brought
him hither, he proceeded at once to reconnoitre the
prisoner's quarters. Greyslaer, in all his movements
that night, acted like one who is impelled in
a dream by some resistless power within him; and
he was spellbound—if the icy wand of demon passion
hath aught in it of magic power above the
human heart.

He approached the house, and discovered, by the
glimmer of a dull lamp within the entry, that the
street door was ajar. He reached the door itself,
and, opening it still farther with a cautious hand,
beheld the sentinel stretched upon a bench in the

hall, and snoring so obstreperously, that, if his
slumbers were not feigned, they must be the effect
of deep intoxication. An empty flagon, which lay
on the floor just where it had rolled from the drunken
hand of the sleeper, seemed sufficiently to prove
that the latter must be the case; and, indeed, we
may here mention, in passing, that Stickney, who
played the part of the Helderberg recruit so successfully,
subsequently escaped the extreme penalty
of military law by pleading that his neglect of duty
arose from intoxication produced by a drugged mixture
administered by the family upon which the
prisoner and his sentinel were alike quartered—
their real connivance in the escape of Bradshawe
being known only to Stickney's superiors.

Greyslaer paused a moment to discover if there
were no greater obstacle to his ingress to the premises
than those which had hitherto presented themselves.
Suddenly he heard a step in the room nearest
to the street door; it showed that the family
which occupied the lower floor of the house had
not yet retired. Greyslaer startled slightly (did the
guilty soul of a murderer make him thus tremulous?),
and, turning round at the noise, the scabbard of his
sword rattled against the bench whereon reposed
the sleeping soldier. A light flashed momentarily
through the keyhole of the door opposite; and then,
as it was straightway extinguished, all became still
as before.

Had Max's mind not been wholly preoccupied
by one subject, his suspicions must now have been
fully aroused, that the occupants of the mansion
were quietly colluding in the escape of the prisoner.
But now he has ascended the staircase, and, pausing
yet a moment to loosen his rapier in its sheath,
he gives a low tap at the door of the room in which
Bradshawe is quartered.

“Enter, my trusty Joseph, most adroit and commendable

of burglars,” said Bradshawe, scarcely
looking up from the table at which he was writing
by the fickle light of a shabby taper. “Hold on but
a single instant, Bettys,” he continued; “I am only
scratching off some lines to exculpate my worthy
host from any share in this night's business, in case
the wise rebels should think fit to seize him. There,
`Walter Bradshawe,' that signature will be worth
something to an autograph-hunter some of these
days; and now—”

“And now,” echoed a voice near him, in tones
so freezing that even the heart of Bradshawe was
chilled within him at the sound; “and now prepare
yourself for a miscreant's death upon this very instant.”

Bradshawe looked up in stupified amazement.

“Do you know me, Walter Bradshawe?” cried
Greyslaer, raising his hat from his brow, and making
a stride toward the table.

“We're blown, by G—d!” ejaculated the captive
Tory. “Know you? to be sure I do. You're the
rebel Greyslaer, who, having got wind of this night's
attempt, have come mousing here after farther evidence
to hang me. But you'll find it devilish hard
to prove that I meant to abuse the clemency of Lafayette,”
added the prisoner, tearing to pieces the
note he had just written.

“I come on no such business,” said Greyslaer,
smiling bitterly. “I come—”

“And if you are not here in an official capacity,
sir, how dare you intrude into my private chambers?”
cried Bradshawe, springing to his feet and
confronting Max with a look of brutal insolence.

“Bradshawe, you cannot distemper me by such
tone of insult. Your own heart must suggest the
errand which brought me hither.” (The countenance
of Bradshawe for the first time fell.) “I

might have slain you as I entered; murdered you
as you sat but now with your eyes bent upon the
paper that you have since torn; but my vengeance
were incomplete, unless you know by whose hand
you fall.”

The passionless, icy tone in which Greyslaer
spoke, seemed to unnerve even the iron heart of
Bradshawe. He tried to return the steadfast gaze
of that fixed and glassy eye, but his glances involuntarily
wandered, his cheek grew pale, his soul wilted
before the marble looks of his mortal foe. “He
must have the strength as well as the look of a
maniac,” he murmured, catching at the back of a
chair which stood near him—whether to seize it as
a weapon of defence or merely to steady himself by
its support, we know not. But Max seemed to put
the last construction upon the act, as, with a discordant
laugh, he cried,

“Aha! he shrinks then, this truculent scoundrel—”

“I'm unarmed, I'm defenceless—a prisoner. If
it's satisfaction you seek of me, Major Greyslaer—”
cried Bradshawe, hurriedly, as, holding the chair before
him, he backed toward a corner of the apartment.

“Satisfaction?” thundered Max, interrupting the
appeal by springing furiously across the room.
The strength of Bradshawe seemed to wither beneath
the touch of the icy fingers that were instantly
planted in his throat. “Damn you, sir—damn
you, what satisfaction can you make to man—to
God, for driving me to an accursed deed like—this?”

His sword leaped from its scabbard as he spoke,
and Bradshawe involuntarily closed his eyes as the
gleaming blade seemed about to be sheathed in his
bosom.

But suddenly the hand of Greyslaer is arrested by
an iron grip from behind; he turns to confront the assailant

who has thus seized him, when Bradshawe,
quickly recovering himself, deals a blow with the
chair—of which he has not yet released his hold—
a blow that brings Greyslaer instantly to the ground.
Wounded, but not stunned, Max quickly regains his
feet, and makes a pass at the intruder, which only
inflicts a slight flesh wound, but not before Bradshawe
has thrown open a window, through which,
followed by Bettys, he leaps upon a shed and drops
into the garden below. Greyslaer hesitates not to follow;
but the mutual assistance which the fugitives
render each other enables them to scale the gardenwall
more quickly than their pursuer, and their receding
forms are swallowed up in the surrounding
darkness before Greyslaer has gained the quay to
which they have retreated.

The reviving air of night, the inspiriting consciousness
of freedom after so long incarceration,
brought back at once to Bradshawe his wonted energy
and hardihood of character; and when Bettys
provided him with a weapon to use in any extremity
to which they might be reduced in accomplishing
the final steps of their escape, the bold Tory could
scarcely resist the impulse to turn back and take
signal vengeance upon the man who had momentarily
humbled his haughty spirit; but every instant
was precious, and the fugitives paused not in making
their way to the point where they expected to find
Valtmeyer's boat waiting them.

They followed down the water's edge nearly to
State-street, as it is now called, and must have been
within a few hundred yards of the canoe—for the
garden of Mr. Taylor, near which it was moored,
lay close upon the south side of this broad avenue
—when suddenly the report of a pistol fired from
the house arrests their steps.

They falter and turn back. Bradshawe, hurriedly
telling his companion to leave him to his fate, turns

the angle of a street, and strikes up from the river toward
the heart of the town. He approaches Market-street,
which runs parallel with the Hudson, and,
hearing the tramp of an armed patrol upon its side-walks,
conceals himself behind a bale of merchandise,
which affords the only shelter near. It seems
an age before the city guard has passed by; and
Bettys, who, in the mean time, has thridded the
piles of staves and lumber upon the quay, and visited
the place where he expected to find the canoe,
returns to Bradshawe's side just as the patrol has
passed the head of the street, and whispers that the
boat is gone. Not an instant is to be lost if they
would now make their way to the suburbs, through
which is their only hope of escape into the open
country beyond. They cross Market-street—though
at the widest part—fly up the dark and narrow passage
of Maiden Lane, and gain the outskirts of the
town near the top of the hill, where the old jail, till
within a few years, stood frowning. The sight of
the grated cells in which he had been immured for
so many long months, lends new life to the exertions
of Bradshawe; and, with the agile Bettys, he soon
reaches the nodding forests, which at that time still
in broad patches crowned the heights in the rear of
the ancient city of Albany.

Let us now return to Greyslaer, whom we left
groping his way among the midnight shadows upon
the river's bank when the fugitives escaped from his
pursuit, and flitted along the water-side while he
was scaling the walls of the garden.

The escape of Bradshawe, under all the circumstances
which attended his imprisonment, wrought
up his pursuer to a pitch of phrensy that completely
bewildered him. It was not merely that he was
thus foiled in his meditated vengeance on the instant
when the cruel slanderer of Alida seemed placed
by fate completely in his hands, but the idea that

Bradshawe should make good his retreat within the
lines of the royalists, and thus triumphantly leave
the stigma which he had planted to work its dire
consequences, when he himself was secure and far
away from his victims, made Greyslaer frantic; and
Max, scarce knowing whither he hurried or what he
could hope for in his wild pursuit, darted hither and
thither amid the labyrinth of lumber which was
heaped up along the busy quays of Albany.

Now it chanced that, at the very moment that
Bettys was, with whispered curses, deploring to
Bradshawe the absence of the canoe, upon which
the safety of all seemed to depend, Valtmeyer,
whom the intervening piles of boards upon the
shore had alone screened from the view of Bettys,
was stealthily guiding around the head of the pier
at the foot of the street where the two fugitives had
halted until the patrol should pass by. The outlaw,
too, as well as they, heard the tramp of armed
men in the silent streets of the city; and, pausing
for a moment until the sounds of alarm swept farther
toward the northern part of the town, he plied
his paddle with fresh industry until he could run his
shallop into a slip or dock near the foot of the garden
where Max had first lost sight of the fugitives.
Here he landed, in the hope of still being in time
to prevent Bradshawe and his comrade from seeking
the boat at a point farther down the quay, and
taking them off from the shore the moment they
should make good their escape from the rear of the
house.

In the mean time, the darkness of the night, and
the other obstructions to pursuit already mentioned,
soon cut short the frantic search of Greyslaer, who,
emerging from the heavy shadows of the place,
thought that he again had caught sight of the fugitives

as Valtmeyer suddenly confronted him in his
path.

“Dunder und blixem, capting, I was afeard you
were a gone coon, and was on the point of shoving
off without you. Where's Bettys? We must be
off in haste! A rebel luder!” he exclaimed, as
Max sprang forward and attempted to collar him.
“Der Henker schlag heinen! The hangman strikes
in it, but Red Wolfert's rope is not yet spun.”

And, muttering thus, the giant, quick as light,
shook off the grasp of the young officer, and, leaping
backward a pace or two, presented a pistol at his
head.

“Miss me, you scoundrel, and your fate is certain,”
cried the undaunted Max; but Valtmeyer had
no idea of farther compromising the escape of himself
and his friends by the report of arms at such a
moment; and, seeing that the attempt to awe his
foeman into silence had failed, he drew his hanger
and rushed upon Greyslaer; the sword of Max was
already out, and the ruffian strength of Valtmeyer
found an admirable match in the skill, the steadiness,
and alertness of movement of his opponent,
though the darkness amid which they fought deprived
Greyslaer of much of his superiority as a
fencer.

Thrice did the outlaw attempt, by beating down
the guard of his opponent, to fling his huge form
upon Max and bear him to the earth; and thrice
did the sword of Greyslaer drink the blood of the
brawny borderer as he thus essayed a death-grapple
with his slender foe.

And now Greyslaer, who has hitherto yielded
ground before the furious onslaught of the other,
begins to press him backward foot by foot, until the
edge of the quay, upon which Valtmeyer stands,
permits him to retreat no farther. He grinds his
outlandish oaths more savagely between his teeth

as he feels his life-blood failing him, and, conscious
that his hour has come, seems bent alone upon
bearing his gallant foeman with him to destruction.
He hears the sullen dashing of the waves at his
feet, and glares furtively around, whether from now
first realizing the double danger near, or to distract
for a moment the attention of his antagonist, it
matters not; for now, quickly dropping his weapon,
he springs forward and clutches Max in his
arms in the same moment that a final thrust passes
through his own body. The wound is mortal,
but still the bold outlaw struggles. He has borne
his foeman to the ground, and, pierced through
as he is, with the steel still quivering in his vitals,
he flounders with his grappled burden toward the
water's edge. The life of Greyslaer hangs upon
a hair, as, with knee planted against the breast of
Valtmeyer and one hand at his throat, he clings
with the other to the topmost timber of the pier;
when, suddenly, the mortal grip of the dying ruffian
is relaxed. There is a heavy plashing in the dark-rolling
river, and now its current sweeps away the
gory corse of Valtmeyer.

But the perils of this eventful night were not yet
over for Max Greyslaer.

The town, as we have already noted, had been
alarmed by the scene near Mr. Taylor's premises,
and the streets were now patrolled in every direction,
either by a military guard or by the bold burghers,
who rushed armed from their houses at the first
sound of danger. Amid the excitement of a fight
so desperate, neither Max nor his redoubted foe had
noticed the turmoil that was rising near. But the
clashing of their swords had not escaped the ears of
the patrol, who hurried toward the spot whence
came the sounds just as the conflict was terminating;
Greyslaer had scarcely regained his feet before
he was in the hands of the guard—a prisoner.

11. CHAPTER XI.
THE DUNGEON TENANT.

J. O. Beauchamp.

Max Greyslaer the tenant of a dungeon? and
placed there, too, as the murderer of Walter Bradshawe?
It is but too true! The fatality is a strange
one; yet there are turns in human destiny far more
singular.

Had Greyslaer been recognised in the moment
that, covered with dust and gore, he rose breathless
from the embrace of the dying Valtmeyer, and
was seized by the party of Whig soldiery, the
charges that were that very night preferred against
him by the Tory friends of Bradshawe, in order to
conceal their share in the escape of that partisan,
had never been listened to; nor could their successful
attempt at criminating him have made the head
it did. But now, before the Whig officer can call
upon a single friend to identify his character, the
suspicion of murder has been fixed upon him, and,
by the time his name and rank becomes known, his
enemies are prepared with evidence which makes
that name a still farther proof of his guilt.

The disaffected family to whose care Bradshawe
was intrusted, have deposed to the fact of a muffled

stranger having passed into his quarters at midnight.
The head of the household avers that it was a man
of Greyslaer's height and general appearance. He
had heard his step in the entry, unlocked his door,
and looked out to see who it might be; but the
stranger, having already reached the staircase and
begun ascending, his face was averted from deponent,
who could see only the general outline of the
stranger's figure. The deponent did not call upon
the stranger to stop, nor address him in any way;
for he took it for granted that the stranger had been
challenged by the sentinel, and must therefore be
provided with a permit or pass to visit the prisoner
at that unusual hour. He had himself already retired
for the night. The deponent had subsequently
heard a tumult, as of men struggling together, in
the room above. He leaped from his bed, and, hastening
to ascend the stairs, stumbled over the sentinel,
who lay stretched at their foot, as if struck
down and stunned a moment before. As he stopped
a moment to raise the man, he heard a noise,
as of a heavy body falling, in the room above. He
hurried onward to the room, but its occupant had
already disappeared. There was blood upon the
floor; a broken chair, and other signs of desperate
conflict. A window that looked into the garden
stood open, and there was fresh blood upon the
window-still.

Other members of this deponent's family here
supplied the next link in the testimony, by stating
that they had heard the window above them thrown
open with violence, and the feet of men trampling
rapidly over the shed beneath it, as if one were in
ferocious pursuit of the other.

As for the sentinel, he seems ready to swear to
anything that will get himself out of peril. He
cannot account for the stranger making his way

into the house unnoticed by himself, save by the
suspicion that his evening draught must have been
drugged by somebody. He certainly was not sleeping
upon his post, but his perceptions were so dulled
that he was not aware of the presence of an intruder
until he felt himself suddenly struck from
behind and cast nearly senseless upon the ground.
But he too, when raised to his feet by the first witness,
had followed him to the chamber already described,
of whose appearance at the time the former
deponent had given a true description.

The testimony of the night patrol—less willingly
given—proves the condition in which Greyslaer
was found, with dress disordered and bloodstained,
as if fresh from some deadly encounter. The
marks of blood, too, have been found spotted over
the timbers of the pier, while the footprints leading
down to the water's edge; the steps dashed here and
there in the blood-besprinkled dust; the light soil
beaten down and flattened in one place, and scattered
in others, as if some heavy body had been drawn
across it—all mark the spot as the scene of some
terrible struggle, whose catastrophe the black-rolling
waves at hand might best reveal.

There was but one circumstance which suggested
another agency than that of Greyslaer in the doings
of this eventful night, and that was the attack on
Mr. Taylor's premises, which had first alarmed the
town. But this, again, took place at the opposite
side of the city, and could have had no connexion
with Bradshawe; for Mr. Taylor's people had seen
the ruffians flying off in a contrary direction from
that where Bradshawe resided.

But, then, what motive could have hurried on a
man of Greyslaer's habits and condition of life to a
deed so foul as that of murder?

His habits, his condition? Why! was not the

supposed murderer no other than the wild enthusiast,
who, in some besotted hour of passion, had betrothed
himself to the abandoned offcast of an Indian
profligate? And had not Bradshawe been compelled,
by the venomous assaults which had been
made upon his own character, to rip up that hideous
story, and publish to the world the infamy of Greyslaer's
mistress? Was it not, too, through the very
instrumentality of this unhappy person that Bradshawe's
life had, under colour of law, been previously
endangered; that the felon charge of acting
as a spy had been got up and enforced against the
much-injured royalist? a charge which, even after
sentence of death had been pronounced upon the
Tory partisan, the stanchest of the opposite faction
hesitated to acknowledge were sufficiently sustained
to warrant his execution. No, the murderer of
Bradshawe could be no other than the betrothed
lover of Alida! Such was the testimony and such
the arguments which had lost Greyslaer his personal
liberty, and which now threatened him with a
felon's fate upon the scaffold!

And where, now, is that unhappy girl, whose sorrows
have so strangely reacted upon her dearest
friend? whose blighted name carries with it a power
to blast even the life of her lover?

It is the dead hour of midnight, and she has stolen
out from the house of the relative who had given
her shelter and privacy, to visit the lonely prisoner in
his dungeon. The prisoner starts from his pallet as
the door grates on its hinges, and that pale form
now stands before him.

Let the first moments of their meeting be sacred
from all human record. It were profane to picture
the hallowed endearments of two true hearts thus
tried, thus trusting each other till the last.

“Oh, Max,” murmured Alida, when the first moments

of the meeting were over, “oh, how little did
I dream, when I wrote that you should see me no
more, that love and duty again might lead me to
you; that God's providence would place you where
no woman's doubt could prevent me from—”

“Yes, yes, it is the providence of God, Alida;
you call it rightly,” interrupted Max, with bitter
feeling. “'Twas Heaven alone which, in its justice,
has plunged me in this dreadful—Alida, Alida,
know you not that, in the eye of Heaven, I am this
moment the thing that men would make me out to
be?”

“Oh, no, no, no!” she shrieked, starting back
with features which, for a single instant convulsed
with horror, were changed to more than woman's
tenderness as again she caught the hands of Max in
both of hers, “you are not, you cannot be a—a—
no, Greyslaer, no, you cannot be a — murderer.
You fought with him, you met him singly—sinfully,
in the eye of Heaven, but not with brutal intent
of murder—you did—in single combat—'twas in a
duel that he fell.”

“Hear me, hear me, my loved one; it was—”

“No, no, I will not hear; I know 'twas so; and I
—I was the one whose guilty dream of vengeance
first quickened such intention into being, and sharpened
your sword against his life.”

“Alas! Alida, why torture yourself by recalling
the memory of that wild hallucination of your early
years? That shadowy intention of avenging your
own wrongs was but the darkly romantic dream of
an undisciplined mind, preyed upon and perverted
by disease and sorrow; and many a prayerful hour
has since atoned to Heaven for those sinful fancies.
But my conscience is loaded far more heavily, and
with a burden that none can share; a burden,” he
added, smiling with strange meaning on his lip,
“that, mayhap, it hardly wishes to shake off.”

“You slew him not at vantage; he fell not an
unresisting victim to your vengeful passions,” gasped
Alida.

“The man that I slew yesternight fell in fair and
open fight, Alida. There is no stain upon my soldier's
sword for aught that happened then.” The
words had not passed the lips of her lover ere Alida
was on her knees. “Nay,” cried Max, catching
her clasped hands in his, “blend not my name in
your prayer of thankfulness to Heaven; 'twill weigh
it down and keep it from ascending; for, surely as
thou kneelest there, I am in heart a murderer.
'Twas Bradshawe's life at which I aimed; 'twas
Bradshawe's death, his murder, that I sought,
when Valtmeyer crossed my path and fairly met the
punishment of his crimes. A mysterious Providence
made me the instrument of its justice in exacting
retribution from him; and the same Providence
now punishes in me the foul intention which
placed me there to do its bidding.”

If there was something of bitterness in the tone
in which Max spoke these words, which gave a
double character to what he said, Alida did not notice
it as passionately she cried,

“Kneel, then, Greyslaer, kneel here with me;
kneel in gratitude to the Power that preserved
thee from the perpetration of this wickedness, and
so mysteriously foiled the contrivings of thy heart;
kneel in thankfulness to the chastening hand that
hath so soon sent this painful trial to punish this
lapse from virtue—to purge thy heart from its guilty
imaginings; kneel in prayer that this cloud which
we have brought upon ourselves may in Heaven's
own time pass away; or, if not, ITS will be done!”

“I may not, I cannot kneel, Alida,” said Max, in
gloomy reply to her impetuous appeal. “No!
though I own the chastening hand which is even

now stretched out above me, my heart still refuses
to cast out the design that brought me hither. I
will not, I must not kneel in mockery to Heaven!”

“And thou—thou wouldst still—murder him!”
shrieked Alida.

“Leave me, distract me not thus,” cried her
agonized lover, leaning against the wall as if to
steady himself, and covering his face with his hands
to shut out the earnest gaze she fixed upon him.

“Speak to me, look at me, Max,” implored Alida,
in tones of wild anguish, as she sprang forward and
caught his arm. “Thou wouldst—thou wouldst!”

A cold shiver seemed to tremble through the
frame of her lover; but his voice, though low and
husky, had an almost unearthly calmness in it, as,
dropping his hands and fixing his looks full upon
her, he said,

“I would, though hell itself were gaping there to
swallow both of us! Hear me, Alida; it is the hand
of Fate—it is some iron destiny that works within
my heart—that knots together and stiffens the damned
contrivances it will not forego. Why should I
deceive you when I cannot deceive myself? Why
insult Heaven with this vain lip-worship, when no
holy thought can inhabit here?—here,” he repeated,
striking his hand upon his bosom, “here, where
one horrid craving rages to consume me—the lust
of that man's blood!”

“Oh God! this is too horrible!” gasped Alida,
as, shuddering, she sank upon the prisoner's pallet
and buried her face in her hands.

Max made no movement to raise her, but his was
the mournful gaze of the doom-stricken, as, standing
aloof, his lips moved with some half-uttered
words, which could scarcely have reached the ears
of Alida.

“Weep on,” he said, “weep on, my love—my

first, my last, my only love. Those bursting tears
do well become her, a child of sorrow from her earliest
youth. Those tears! Mine is not the hand
to stay them, mine the heart to mingle with them
in sympathetic flow; for I—I can weep no more!”

“Alida, sweet Alida,” said he, advancing at last
toward her; “Alida, my best, my loveliest—she
hears me not; she will not listen to me. Oh God!
why shudder you so, and withdraw your hand from
my touch?”

But Alida has sprung to her feet, has dashed the
tears from her eyes, and her clear voice thrills in
the ears of her lover as thus she speaks him:

“Hear me, Greyslaer: 'twas I first infused these
fell thoughts into your bosom; 'twas I, in the besotted
season of youth, and folly, and girlish fantasy
—I that taught you this impious lesson of murderous
retribution. It is my wrongs, my individual
and personal injuries, whose recent aggravation has
revived the mad intent, and stamped it with a character
of blackness such as before you never dreamed
of. Now, by the God whom I first learned to
worship in full, heart-yielded reverence, from you,
Max Greyslaer—by HIM I swear, that, if you persist
in this, I—I myself, woman as I am—will be the
first to tread the path of crime, to which you point
the way, and forestall you in perdition of your soul.
I am free to move where I list, and work my will
as best I may; your will is but that of a dungeon
prisoner, and Bradshawe's life, if it depend upon the
murderous deed of either, shall expire at my hand
before you pass these doors.”

The fire of her first youth flashed in the eyes of
Alida as she spoke, and there was a determination
seated on her brow, such as even in her haughtiest
mood of that arrogant season it had never wore.

But the next moment all this had passed away entirely,
and it was only the broken-hearted, the still-loving,
the imploring Christian woman that kneeled
at the feet of Greyslaer.

“Max—Max—dearest Max,” she said, while sobs
half suffocated her utterance, “it is Alida, your own,
your once fondly-loved Alida, that pleads to you,
that kneels here imploring you to rend this wickedness
from your breast, and ask Heaven for its pardon.
It is she who has no friend, no relative, no
resting-place in any heart on earth save that from
which you would drive her out to make room for
images so dreadful. Surely you did love me once;
surely you have pity for my sorrows; you will not,
you cannot persist in thus trebling their burden.
Ah! now you weep; it is Heaven, not I, dearest
Max, that softens your heart toward your own Alida.
Blessed be those tears, and—nay, raise me not yet
—not till you have knelt beside me.”

The cell is narrow, the walls are thick. There
is no sound of human voice, no shred of vital air
can pass through the vaulted ceiling which shuts in
those kneeling lovers! Can, then, the subtile spirit
of prayer pierce the flinty rock, mount into the liberal
air, and, spreading as it goes, fill the wide ear
of Heaven with the appeal of those two lonely human
sufferers?

The future may unfold.

12. CHAPTER XII.
WAYFARERS IN THE FOREST.

The Dead Horseman, by Mrs. Sigourney.

The mingled yarn of our story is now becoming
so complex, that, to follow out its details with clearness,
we must pause to take up a new thread which
at this moment becomes interwoven with the rest.

The faithful Balt had been almost the only visiter
admitted to the Hawksnest during the last few
months that immediately preceded the withdrawal
of Miss De Roos from her home. The old forester
seemed to have conceived a kind of capricious
liking for little Guise, the half-blood child; and
as his visits were really paid to that ill-omened
urchin, though his excuse for coming was to ask
after the health of Miss Alida, and to inquire if she
had any news of the major, Miss De Roos never
thought it worth while to deny herself to her humble
friend, even while practising the strictest seclusion
in regard to her other neighbours.

Balt, in the mean time, was too observing a character
not to notice that some secret grief must be
preying upon Alida; and his new-sprung interest in
little Guise soon became secondary to the feelings
of concern which her fast-fading health awakened
in the worthy woodsman.

It chanced one day that Alida, who not infrequently

took occasion to employ his services in
some slight task, which, while remunerating his
trouble, would give him occupation while lounging
about the premises, pointed out a magnolia which
she wished removed to another part of the shrubbery,
in the hope that a more favourable situation
might revive its drooping condition. Balt readily
undertook the task of transplanting it, while Alida
looked on to direct him during the operation.

“Now, Miss Alida,” said the woodsman, striking
his spade into the earth, “I don't know much of the
natur of this here little tree, seeing as I never happened
on one in any woods I've hunted over; but
I rayther mistrust the winds have but little to do
with its getting kinder sickly, as it were, in its present
situation, I do.”

“And why, Balt?”

“Why, you see now, ma'am, if the tree were attackted
from the outside, it's the outside would first
feel it; the edges of the leaves would first crumple
up and turn brownish like, while the middle parts
of them might long remain as sleekly green and
shiny as the edges be now. There's something,
Miss Alida, at the heart, at the root, I may rayther
say, of that tree; something that underminds it and
withers it from below. And these sort o' ailings,
whether in trees or in human beings, are mighty
hard to get at, I tell ye.” As the woodsman spoke
he leaned upon his spade, and looked steadfastly at
Miss De Roos, who felt conscious of changing colour
beneath the earnest but respectful gaze of her
rude though well-meaning friend.

She did not answer, but only motioned him to go
on in his digging; and Balt, seeing that he had in
some way offended, resumed his work with diligence.
But the next moment, forgetful wholly of

the figurative use he had made of his skill in arboriculture,
and speaking merely in literal application
to the task before him, he exclaimed triumphantly,

“There, you see, now, it's jist as I told ye, Miss
Alida; there has been varmint busy near the roots
of this little tree. Look but where I put my spade,
and see how the field-mice have more than half
girdled it. The straw and other truck which that
book-reading Scotch gardener put around the roots,
has coaxed the mice to make their nests there in
the winter, and they've lived upon the bark till only
two or three fingers' breadths are left.”

“I hope there's bark enough left yet to save it,”
said Alida, now only intent upon preserving the
shrub.

“There's life there, Miss Alida—green life in
that narrow strip; and, while there's life, there's
hope; and old Balt, when he once knows whence
comes the ailing, is jist the man to stir himself and
holp it from becoming fatal.”

As the woodsman spoke he again ventured an
earnest though rapid glance at the face of the young
lady; but this time she had turned away her head,
and, hastily signifying to Balt that he might deal
with the magnolia according to the best of his judgment,
she strolled off as if busied for the moment
in examining some other plants, and soon afterward
withdrew into the house, without again speaking to
him.

The worthy fellow, who, on his subsequent visits
to little Guise, had never again an opportunity of
seeing the protectress of the child alone, was deeply
hurt at the idea of this conversation having put
Alida upon her guard against listening to more of
these hinted suspicions that she needed his sympathy.
His natural good sense, however, prevented
honest Balt from apologizing for his officious kindness,

or showing in any way that he was conscious
of having offended. He was, however, from this
moment fully convinced that some mysterious sorrow
was the latent cause of Miss De Roos's rapidly-fading
health, and he determined to leave no proper
means untired to get at the real source of her
mental suffering.

His first desire was to communicate instantly
with Greyslaer; but he had never been taught to
write, and his mother-wit suggested the impropriety
of trusting matters so delicate to a third party by
employing an amanuensis. In the mean time, the
cruelly-slanderous story of Bradshawe reached at
last the sphere in which Balt was chiefly conversant.
The first mysterious affair about Miss De
Roos had, as we have seen, been known almost exclusively
to the simpler class of her country neighbours;
but the dark tale, as now put forth by Bradshawe
and his Albany friends, originating in the
upper classes of society, soon descended to the
lowest, and became alike the theme of the parlour
and the kitchen, the city drawing-room and the road
side alehouse.

A heartless female correspondent of Alida had
first disclosed it to that unhappy lady, when alleging
it as an excuse for breaking off their farther intercourse;
but it was not till after her departure from
the Hawksnest that Balt heard the tale, as told in all
its horrid enormity among the coarse spirits of a village
bar-room. His first impulse was to shake the
life out of the half-tipsy oracle of the place, who gave
it as the latest news from Albany; but, upon some one
exclaiming, “Why, man, this is fiddler's news; that
we've all known for a month or more,” while others
winked and motioned toward Balt, as if the subject
should be dropped for the present, he saw that the
scandal had gone too far to be thus summarily set

at rest. There was but one other move which suggested
itself to him, and that was to take instant
counsel with the party chiefly interested in the fair
fame of Alida. And Balt, within the hour, had borrowed
a horse from a neighbour, and started for
Fort Stanwix.

Pressing forward as rapidly as possible, he continued
his journey through the night, and thus passing
Greyslear on the road, arrived at his quarters
just four-and twenty hours after Max had so hurriedly
started for Albany. Balt surmised at once
what must be the cause for his abrupt departure,
and, as soon as possible, took horse again and retraced
his steps; borrowed a fresh nag from the same farmer
who had lent him the first, and pushed forward
toward Albany.

His journey was wholly uneventful until he had
passed Schenectady and entered upon the vast pine
plains which extend between that city and the
Hudson. But, fitly to explain what here occurred,
we must go back to Bradshawe and his comrade
Bettys, and trace their adventures from the place
where last we left them in the immediate suburbs
of Albany.

To enter a farmer's stable and saddle a couple of
his best horses was a matter of little enterprise to
two such characters as Bradshawe and his freebooter
ally; and now the pine plains, that reach away
some fifteen miles toward Schenectady, had received
the adventurous fugitives beneath their dusky
colonnades.

The remains of this forest are still visible in a
stunted undergrowth, which, barely hiding the sandy
soil from view, gives so monotonous and dreary
an appearance to the continuous waste. But, at the
time of which we write, and even until the steamcraft
of the neighbouring Hudson had devoured this,

with a hundred other noble forests in its greedy furnaces,
there was a gigantic vegetation upon those
plains which now seem so barren.

The scrub oak, which is fast succeeding to
the shapely pine, had not made its appearance; and
the pale poplar, whose delicate leaves here and there
quivered over the few runnels which traversed the
thirsty soil, was almost the only tree that reared its
head among those black and endless arcades of towering
trunks, supporting one unbroken roof of dusky
verdure.

Bold and expert horsemen as they were, Bradshawe
and his comrade soon found it impossible to
pick their path amid this cavernous gloom in the
deep hour of midnight. They were soon conscious
of wandering from the highway, which, from
the impossibility of seeing the skies through the
overarching boughs above it, as well from the absence
of all coppice or undergrowth along its sides,
was easily lost. They therefore tethered their steeds
and “camped down,” as it is called in our hunter
phrase, upon the dry soil, fragrant with the fallen
cones of the pine-trees which it nourished.

So soon as the morning light permitted them to
move, they discovered, as they had feared, that they
had lost the highway without the hope of recovering
it save by devoting more time to the search of a
beaten path than it were safe to consume. They
knew the points of the compass, however, from the
hemlocks which were here and there scattered
through the forest, whose topmost branches, our
woodsmen say, point always toward the rising sun,
and resumed their journey in a direction due west
from the city of Albany.

An occasional ravine, however, which, though at
long intervals, deeply seamed this monotonous plateau
of land, turned them from their course, and thus

delayed their progress; and, with appetites sharp-set
by their morning ride, they were glad to arrive,
about noon, at the earthen hovel of one of that
strange, half-gipsy race of beings known by the
name of Yansies, which, even within the last twelve
or fifteen years, still had their brute-like burrows
in this lonely wild. Even Bettys, little fastidious
as he was, recoiled from the fare which these “Dirt
Eaters,” as the Indians called them, placed before
him. But Bradshawe, while declining their hospitality
with a better grace, procured an urchin to guide
him to the highway, which he was glad to learn was
not far from the hovel.

They emerged, then, once more upon the travelled
road within a few miles of Schenectady and
at a point where they would soon be compelled to
leave it to make the circuit of that town. Their
horses were weary and in need of refreshment; and,
with their various windings through the forest, they
had spent nearly twelve hours in accomplishing a
journey which, by a direct route, the time-conquering
locomotive now performs in one.

The Yansie boy had left them; for the red hues of
the westering sun, streaming upon the sandy road,
made their way sufficiently plain before them.
Their jaded horses laboured through the loose and
arid soil, but still they urged them forward to escape
from the forest before the coming twilight. They
had ridden thus for some time in perfect silence,
when, upon a sudden exclamation from Bettys, his
comrade raised his eyes and looked anxiously forward
in the long vista before him. The road at
this place ran perfectly straight over a dead level
for a mile or more. The setting sun poured a flood
of light upon the yellow sand, from which a warm
mist, that softened every object near, seemed to be
called out by its golden beams. Bradshawe shaded

his eyes with his hand to see if he could descry
an approaching object, while Bettys, who had already
drawn his bridle, motioned impatiently for
him to retire among the trees.

“Give me one of your pistols, Joe,” cried Bradshawe.
“It is but a single mounted traveller; I
can make him out now clearly, and I'm determined
to put a question or two to the fellow.”

“Well, captain, you know best; only I thought
it might be a pity to slit the poor devil's throat to
prevent his carrying news of us to Albany; and
that, you know, we must do if we once come to
speech of him.”

“How know you but what he may be a king's
man, and assist us—or a mail-rider, and give us
some rebel news of value? Draw off, Joe, and
leave me to fix him.” But Bettys had already trotted
aside into the wood, where he managed to keep
nearly a parallel route with Bradshawe, who, clapping
Bettys' pistol in his bosom, and loosing in its
scabbard the sword with which that worthy had
provided him in the first hour of his escape, now
jogged easily forward to meet the traveller.

As they approached each other more nearly, and
Bradshawe got a closer survey of the coming horseman,
there seemed something about him which
promised that he might not be quite so easily dealt
with as the Tory captain had at first anticipated.

His drab hat and leather hunting-shirt indicated
only the character of a common hunter of the border
or frontiersman of the period. But, though he
carried neither rifle on his shoulder nor pistol at his
belt, and while the light cutlass or couteau de chasse
by his side seemed feebly matched with the heavy
sabre of the Tory captain, there was a look of compact
strength and vigour—a something of military
readiness and precision about the man, which stamped

him as one who might often have borne an animated
share in the fierce personal struggles of the
times; a man to whom, in short, an attack like that
meditated by Bradshawe could bring none of the
confusing terrors of novelty.

The stranger, who seemed so occupied with his
own thoughts as scarcely to notice Bradshawe in the
first instance, now eyed him with a curious and almost
wild gaze of earnestness as they approached
each other.

Bradshawe, on the other side, surveyed the borderer's
features with a stern and immoveable gaze, till
his own kindling suddenly with a strange gleam
of intelligence, he plucked forth his pistol and presented
it within a few feet of the other horseman.

“The rebel Balt, by G—d!” he cried. “Dismount,
or die on the instant.”

The back of the woodsman was toward the sun,
and his broad brimmed hat so shaded his features
that his assailant could scarcely scan them to advantage;
but if the suddenness of the assault did in
any way change the evenness of his pulse, not a
muscle or a nerve betrayed the weakness.

“I know ye, Lawyer Wat Bradshawe,” said he,
calmly, “but I don't know what caper ye'd be at in
trying to scare an old neighbour after this fashion—
I don't noways.”

A grim smile played over the harsh features of
Bradshawe, as if even his felon heart could be touched
by admiration at finding a foeman as dauntless
as himself.”

“Real pluck, by heavens!” he ejaculated. “Balt,
you're a pretty fellow, and no mistake; had you
trembled the vibration of a hair, I should have shot
you dead; but it's a pity to spoil such a true piece
of man's flesh if one can help it. Give me that

fresh gelding of yours, my old cock, and you shall
go free.”

“Tormented lightning! Give you Deacon Yates's
six-year-old gray? That indeed! And who in all
thunder, squire, would lend Uncle Balt another
horse, if I gin up this critter for the asking?”

“Pshaw, pshaw! Don't think, old trapper, you
can come over me with your mock simplicity. I
don't want to make a noise here with my firearms,
so save me the trouble of blowing you through by
dismounting instantly.”

As Bradshawe spoke thus, the pistol, which, ready
cocked, he had hitherto kept steadily pointed at the
breast of his opponent, suddenly went off. The
ball grazed the side of the woodsman with a force
which, though it did not materially injure him, yet
fairly turned him round in the saddle.

The swords of both were out on the instnat, while
their horses, plunging with affright, simultaneously
galloped along the road in the direction which Balt
was travelling. With two such riders, however,
they were soon made obedient to the rein. Balt, in
fact, had his almost instantly in hand, while Bradshawe's
tired steed was easily controlled. But their
training had never fitted them for such encounters;
and the gleaming of weapons so terrified the animals,
that it was almost impossible for their riders
to close within striking distance of each other.

Balt, who had the advantage of spurs in forcing
his horse forward and keeping his front to his opponent,
had twice an opportunity of plunging his sword
into the back of Bradshawe, as the ploughman's nag
of the latter reared and wheeled each time their
blades clashed above his head; and it is probable
that the wish to make prisoner of Bradshawe, rather
than any humane scruple upon the part of the worthy

woodsman, alone prevented his using the unchivalrous
advantage.

But now Balt, if he would keep his life, must not
again forego such vantage. A third horseman gallops
out from the wood, and urges forward to the
aid of the hard-pressed Bradshawe; and shrewdly
does the Tory captain require such aid; for his
horse, backed against a bank where the road has
been worn down or excavated a foot or more in
depth, stands with his hind legs planted in a deep
rut, and, unable to wheel or turn, must needs confront
the stouter and more active steed of the opposing
horseman, whose fierce and rapid blows are
with the greatest difficulty parried by his rider.
But the third combatant is now within a few yards
of the woodsman, who, as he hears the savage cry
of this new assailant behind him, wheels so quickly
that he passes his sword through the man in the
same instant that a pistol-shot from the other takes
effect in the body of his charger.

Oh! captain, the d—d rebel has done for me,”
cried Bettys, tumbling from his horse in the same
moment that Balt gained his feet, unhurt by the fall
of his own charger, and sprang forward to grasp the
bit of Bradshawe's horse; but that doughty champion
had already extricated himself from the ground
where he fought to such disadvantage. He met
the attempt of Balt with one furious thrust, which
happily failed in its effect; and, seeing a teamster
approaching in the distance, darted into the woods,
and was soon lost to the eyes of his dismounted opponent.

“Are you much hurt, Mr. Bettys?” said Balt, not
unkindly, as he now recognised the wounded man
while approaching him.

“Hurt?” groaned Bettys. “I'm used up completely.

That cursed iron has done for me in this
world, Uncle Balt.”

“And I fear,” said the woodsman, gravely,
“you've done for yourself in the other.”

“No! by Heaven,” said the stout royalist;
“there's not a rebel life that I grieve for having
shortened. No! as a true man, there's but one
deed that sticks in my gizzard to answer for, and
that, old man, is a trick I played long before Joe
Bettys thought of devoting himself to the king's
lawful rights—God save him.”

“Pray God to save yourself, rayther, while your
hand's in at praying, poor benighted critter,” said
Balt, in a tone of commiseration, even while an indignant
flush reddened his swarthy brow. “Let
every man paddle his own canoe his own way is
always my say, Mr. Bettys; but you had better
lighten yours a little while making a portage from
this life to launch upon etarnity.”

“Yet I meant it not—I meant it not,” said the
wounded man, unheeding Balt. “Wild Wat swore
it was but a catch to serve for a season; that he
would make an honest woman of her afterward.
But this infernal story—that boy too—oh—”

Balt, with wonderful quickness, seemed instantly
to light upon and follow out the train of thought
which the broken words of the wounded man thus
partially betrayed; and yet his aptitude in seizing
them is hardly strange, when we remember that it
was the full preoccupation of his thoughts with the
affairs of Alida which enabled Bradshawe to take
him at disadvantage so shortly before. He saw instantly,
or believed he saw, that Bettys' revelation
referred to her; but, having as yet only the feeblest
clew to her real story, it behooved him to be cautious
in betraying the extent of what he knew. He
did not attempt, therefore, to question the wounded

man as to what he had first said, but only to lead
him forward in his confession.

“Yes, the boy—the poor boy—and his father—”
said he, partly echoing the words of Bettys as he
bent over him.

“His father? Yes, Dirk de Roos left mischief
enough behind him to punish his memory for that
wild business. But we were all gay fellows in those
days—” some pleasant memories seemed to come
over Bettys as he paused for a moment; but he
groaned in spirit as he resumed, “and Fenton, too,
Squire Fenton, who took the deposition of the squaw
—they're gone, both of them—they are both gone
now, and I—I too am going—where—where—”

The loss of blood here seemed to weaken Bettys
so suddenly that he could say no more. The approaching
wagoner had by this time reached the
spot: and when Balt had lifted the fainting form of
the wounded Tory into his wagon, and bound up his
wounds as well as he was able, the teamster willingly
consented to carry Bettys to the nearest house
on the borders of the forest.

In a few moments afterward, Balt, having caught
Bettys' horse, which was cropping the herbage near,
threw himself into the saddle, made the best of his
way back to Schenectady, got a fresh nag, and hurried
with all speed to the Hawksnest.

13. CHAPTER XIII.
THE TRIAL.

Mrs. Ellet.

At this distant day, when we can calmly review
all the facts which led to Max Greyslaer's being put
upon trial for his life, there would hardly seem to
be sufficient evidence against him even to warrant
the indictment under which he was tried. It must
be recollected, however, that the force of circumstantial
evidence is always much enhanced by the
state of public opinion at the time it is adduced
against a culprit; nor should we, whose minds
are wholly unbiased by the fierce political prejudices
which clouded the judgment and warped the
opinions of men in those excited times, pass upon
their actions without making many charitable allowances
for the condition of things which prompted
those actions.

The clemency which the noble-hearted Lafayette—who,
being then in charge of the northern department
of the army of the United States, had his
headquarters at Albany—the clemency which this

right-minded leader and statesman exercised toward
Walter Bradshawe, by ameliorating the rigours of
his confinement, and even (if tradition may be believed)
permitting him to be present at his levees,
affords sufficient proof how public opinion may be
perverted in favour of a criminal by the subtle arts
and indefatigable labours of a zealous faction working
in his behalf. If one so keenly alive to everything
that was just and honourable as Lafayette,
could be blinded as to the real character and deserts
of a detected spy like Bradshawe, is it wonderful
that the intrigues of the same faction which
reprieved his name from present infamy, should for
the time awaken the popular clamour against the
besotted admirer of a woman whose fair fame was
already blasted by its association with that of an
Indian paramour?

How far the grand jury which returned the indictment
against Greyslaer were influenced by that
clamour, and what underhand share the great portion
of its members may have had in first raising it,
we shall not now say. Those men, with their deeds,
whether of good or evil, have all passed away from
the earth; it is not our duty to sit in judgment
upon them here, nor is it necessary for us to examine
into the feelings and principles, whether honest
or otherwise, by which those deeds were actuated.

Something is due, however, to the leading Whigs
of Albany, who allowed the issue of life and death
to be joined under the circumstances which we have
detailed. Something to extenuate the cold indifferance
with which they appear to have permitted the
proceedings to be hurried forward, and the life and
character of one of their own members, not wholly
unknown for his patriotic services, to be thus jeoparded:
and, happily, their conduct upon the occasion
is so easily explained, that a very few words will

possess the reader of everything we have to say
upon the subject.

The horrid crime of assassination was in those
days of civil discord but too common, while each
party, as is well known, attempted to throw the stigma
of encouraging such enormities upon the other.
The life of General Schuyler, of Councillor Taylor,
and of several other Whig dignitaries of the province
of New-York, had been repeatedly attempted;
and when the outrage was charged upon the Tory
leaders, their reply was ever that these were only
retaliatory measures for similar cruelties practised
by the Patriot party; though the cold-blooded murder
of a gallant and regretted British officer by a
wild bush-fighter on the northern frontier was the
only instance of this depravity that is now on record
against the Republicans. Still, as the Whigs had
always claimed to be zealous supporters of all the
laws which flow from a free constitution, they were
galled by this charge of their opponents; and the
desire to wipe off the imputation from themselves,
and fix the stigma where alone it should attach, rendered
them doubly earnest in seeking to bring an offender
of their own party to justice. They were
eager to prove to the country that they were warring
against despotism and not against law; and that,
wherever the Whig party were sufficiently in the
ascendency to regulate the operation of the laws,
they should be enforced with the most impartial
rigour against all offenders. In the present instance,
these rigid upholders of justice, as old Balt the hunter
used afterward to say, “stood so straight that
they rayther slanted backwards.”

The appearance of Greyslaer upon the eventful
morning of his trial was remembered long afterward
by more than one of the many females who
crowded the courtroom on the occasion; but when

long years and the intervention of many a stirring
theme among the subsequent scenes of the Revolution
had made his story nearly forgotten, the antiquated
dame who flourished at that day would still
describe to her youthful hearers the exact appearance
of “young Major Max” as his form emerged
from the crowd, which gave way on either side,
while he strode forward to take his place in the prisoner's
box.

The gray travelling suit in which he came to Albany,
and which he now wore, offering no military attraction
to dazzle the eye, the first appearance of the
prisoner disappointed many a fair gazer, who had
fully expected to see the victim of justice decked
out with all the insignia of his rank as a major in
the Continental army. But his closely-fitting riding-dress
revealed the full proportions of his tall and
manly figure far better, perhaps, than would the
loose habiliments, whose broad skirts and deep flaps
give such an air of travestie to the unsoldier-like
uniforms of that soldierly day. And the most critical
of the giddy lookers-on acknowledged that it
would be a pity that the dark brown locks, which
floated loosely upon the shoulders of the handsome
culprit, should have been cued up and powdered
after the fashion which our Revolutionary heroes
copied from the military costume of the great Frederic.
But, however these trifling traditional details
may interest some, we are dwelling perhaps
too minutely upon them, when matters of such thrilling
moment press so nearly upon our attention.

Before the preliminary forms of the trial were
entered upon, it was observed by the officers of the
court that the prisoner at the bar seemed wholly
unprovided with counsel; and the presiding judge,
glancing toward an eminent advocate, seemed about
to suggest to Major Greyslaer that his defence had

better be intrusted to a more experienced person
than himself. Greyslaer rose, thanked him for his
half-uttered courtesy, and signified that he had already
resisted the persuasions of the few friends
who were present to adopt the course which was
so kindly intimated; but that he was determined that
no means but his own should be used to extricate
him from the painful situation in which he was placed.
His story was a plain one; and, when once
told, he should throw himself upon God and his
country for an honourable acquittal.

The words were few, and the tone in which the
prisoner spoke was so low, that nothing but the profound
silence of the place, and the clear, silvery utterance
of the speaker, permitted them to be audible.
Yet they were heard in the remotest corner of
that crowded court; and the impression upon the
audience was singularly striking, considering the
commonplace purport which those few words conveyed.

There is, however, about some men a character
of refinement, that carries a charm with it in their
slightest actions. It is not that mere absence of all
vulgarity, which may be allowed to constitute the
negative gentleman, but a positive spiritual influence,
which impresses, more or less, even the coarsest
natures with which they are brought in contact.

Max Greyslaer was one of the fortunate few who
have possessed this rare gift of nature, and its exercise
availed him now; for, ere he resumed his
seat, every one present felt, as by instinct, that it
was impossible for that man to be guilty of the brutal
crime of murder!

The trial proceeded. The jury were impanelled
without delay, for there was no one to challenge
them in behalf of the prisoner; and he seemed
strangely indifferent as to the preliminary steps of

his trial. The distinguished gentleman who at that
time filled the office of attorney-general for the
State of New-York, was absent upon official duty
in another district. But his place was supplied by
one of the ablest members of the Albany bar, who,
though he had no professional advocate to oppose
him, opened his cause with a degree of cautiousness
which proved his respect for the forensic talents
of the prisoner at the bar. His exordium,
indeed, which was conceived with great address,
consisted chiefly of a complimentary tribute to
those talents; and he dwelt so happily upon the
mental accomplishments of the gentleman against
whom a most unpleasant public duty had now arrayed
his own feeble powers, that Greyslaer was
not only made to appear a sort of intellectual giant,
who could cleave his way through any meshes of
the law; but the patriotic character, the valuable military
services, and all the endearing personal qualities
of the prisoner, which might have enlisted public
sympathy in his favour, were lost sight of in the
bright but icy renown which was thrown around his
mental abilities.

In a word, the prisoner was made to appear as a
man who needed neither aid, counsel, nor sympathy
from any one present; and the jury were adroitly
put on their guard against the skilful defence of
one so able, that nothing but the excellence of his
cause would have induced the speaker, with all the
professional experience of a life passed chiefly in
the courts of criminal law, to cope with him. He
(the counsel for the prosecution) would, in fact,
have called for some assistance in his own most
difficult task, in order that the majesty of the laws
might be asserted by some more eloquent servant
of the people than himself, but that some of his
most eminent brethren at the bar, upon whom he

chiefly relied, were absent from the city; and,
though the evidence against the prisoner was so
plain that he who runs may read, still his duty was
so very painful that he felt he might not set forth
that evidence with the same force and circumspection
that might attend his efforts under less anxious
circumstances.

Having succeeded thus in effecting a complete
revolution as to the different grounds occupied by
himself and the unfortunate Max, the wily lawyer
entered more boldly into his subject. And if Greyslaer,
who as yet had hardly surmised the drift of
his discourse, blushed at the compliments which
had been paid to his understanding, he now reddened
with indignation as the cunning tongue of detraction
became busy with his character; but his ire
instantly gave way to contempt when the popular
pleader came to a part of his speech in which, with
an ill-judged reliance upon the sordid prejudices of
his hearers, he had the audacity to attempt rousing
their political feelings by painting the young soldier
as by birth and feeling an aristocrat, the son
and representative of a courtier colonel, who in his
lifetime had always acted with the patrician party
in the colony. The allusion, which formed the
climax of a well-turned period, brought Greyslaer
instantly to his feet; and he stretched out his arm
as if about to interrupt the speaker. But his look
of proud resentment changed suddenly into one of
utter scorn as he glanced around the court. His
equanimity at once returned to him; and he resumed
his place, uttering only, in a calm voice, the
words, “You may go on, sir.”

The shrewd lawyer became fully aware of his
mistake from the suppressed murmur which pervaded
the room before he could resume. He had,
by these few last words, undone all that he had

previously effected. He had caused every one present
to remember who and what the prisoner was
up to the very moment when he stood here upon
trial for his life.

The experienced advocate did not, however, attempt
to eat his words, or flounder back to the safe
ground he had so incautiously left, but hurried on
to the next branch of the subject as quickly as possible;
and now came the most torturing moment for
Greyslear. The speaker dropped his voice to tones
of mystic solemnity; and almost whispering, as if he
feared the very walls might echo the hideous tale he
had to tell if spoken louder, thrilled the ears of all
present with the relation of the monstrous loves of
Alida and Isaac Brant, even as the foul lips of Bradshawe
had first retailed the scandal.

The cold drops stood upon the brow of Greyslaer;
and as the low, impassioned, and most eloquent tones
of the speaker crept into his ears, he listened shuddering.
Fain would he have shut up his senses
against the sounds that were distilled like blistering
dew upon them, but his faculty of hearing seemed
at once sharpened and fixed with the same involuntary
intenseness which rivets the gaze of the spellbound
bird upon its serpent-charmer. And when
the speaker again paused, he drew the long breath
which the chest of the dreamer will heave when
some horrid fiction of the night uncoils itself from
his labouring fancy.

The advocate ventured then to return once more
to the character of the prisoner himself ere he closed
this most unhappy history. He now, though, only
spoke of him as the luckless victim of an artful and
most abandoned woman. But he had not come
there, he said, to deplore the degradation which,
amid the unguarded passions of youth, might overtake
a mind of virtue's richest and noblest promise.

The public weal, alas! imposed upon him, and upon
the intelligent gentlemen who composed the jury before
him, a far sterner duty—a duty which, painful
as it was, must still be rigidly, impartially fulfilled.
And no matter what accidents of fortune may have
surrounded the prisoner—no matter what pleading
associations, connected with his youth and his name,
might interpose themselves—no matter what sorrowful
regrets must mingle with the righteous verdict
the evidence would compel them to give in,
they were answerable alike to God and their country
for that which they should this day record as
the truth.

The testimony, as we have already detailed it, was
then entered into; and, as the reader is in possession
of the evidence, it need not be recapitulated
here.

Greyslear seemed to have no questions to put in
cross-examination of the witnesses for the prosecution,
and this part of the proceedings was soon disposed
of. The impression made by the testimony
was so strong, that the prosecuting attorney scarcely
attempted to enforce it by any comments; and now
the prisoner for the first time opened his lips in his
own defence.

“I come not here,” said Greyslear, “to struggle
for a life which is valueless; and, though there are
flaws in the evidence just given which the plain
story I might tell would, I think, soon make apparent
to all who hear me, I am willing to abide by
the testimony as it stands. I mean,” said he, with
emphasis, “the testimony immediately relating to
the transaction which has placed me where I am.
But, regardless as I may be of the issues of this
trial as regards myself, there is another implicated
in its results whom that gentleman—I thank
him for the kindness, though God knows he little

meant it as such—has given me the opportunity of
vindicating before the community where she has
been so cruelly maligned. Death for me has no
terrors, the scaffold no shame, if the proceedings
by which I perish shall providentially, in their progress,
make fully clear her innocence.”

The counsel for the prosecution here rose, and
suggested that the unfortunate prisoner had better
keep to the matter immediately before the court.
He saw no necessity for making a double issue in
the trial, &c., &c. The spectators, who were already
impressed by the few words which Greyslaer
had uttered, murmured audibly at the interruption.
But Max only noticed the rudeness by a cold bow
to the opposite party, as, still addressing the court,
he straightway resumed.

“The learned advocate, who has given such signal
proofs of his zeal and his ability in this day's
trial, has directed his chief efforts to prove a sufficient
motive for the commission of the act with
which I am charged. In the attempt to accomplish
this, the name of a most unfortunate lady has
been dragged before a public court in a manner not
less cruel than revolting. I have a right to disprove,
if I can, the motive thus alleged to criminate me;
and the vindication of that lady's fame is thus inseparably
connected with my own. But, to wipe off
the aspersions on her character, I must have time to
send for the necessary documents. The court will
readily believe that I could never have anticipated
the mode in which this prosecution has been conducted,
and will not, therefore, think I presume upon
its lenity in asking for a suspension of the trial for
two days only.”

The court looked doubtingly at the counsel for
the state, but seemed not indisposed to grant the
privilege which the prisoner asked with such confidence;

but the keen advocate was instantly upon
his feet, and, urging that the prisoner had enjoyed
every opportunity of choosing such counsel as he
pleased, insisted that it was too late to put in so feeble
a plea, merely for the purpose of gaining time,
in the vain hope of ultimately defeating justice.
The calmness of Greyslaer, the apparent indifference
to his fate which had hitherto been most remarkable,
vanished the instant the bench had announced
its decision against him; and his voice now
rung through the crowded chamber in an appeal that
stirred the hearts and quickened the pulses of every
one around him.

“What!” he said, “is the life of your citizens so
valueless that the hollow forms of the law—the law,
which was meant to protect the innocent, shall thus
minister to their undoing? Does the veil of justice
but conceal a soulless image, as deaf to the appeal
of truth as she is painted blind to the influence of
favour? Sir, sir, I warn you how you this day
wield the authority with which you sit there invested.
You, sir, are but the servant of the people; and
I, though standing here accused of felony, am still
one of the people themselves, until a jury of my
peers has passed upon my character. An hour since,
and irregular, violent, and most unjust as I knew
these precipitate proceedings to be—an hour since,
and I was willing to abide by their result, whatever
fatality to me might attend it. I cared not, recked
not for the issue. But I have now a new motive
for resisting the doom which it seems predetermined
shall be pronounced upon me: a duty to perform
to my country, which is far more compulsory than
any I might owe to myself. Sir, you cannot, you
shall not, you dare not thus sacrifice me. It is the
judicial murder of an American citizen against
which I protest. I denounce that man as the instrument

of a political faction, hostile to this government,
and plotting the destruction of one of its officers.
I charge you, sir, with aiding and abetting in a conspiracy
to take away my life. I call upon you to
produce the evidence that Walter Bradshawe is not
yet living. I assert that that man and his friends
know well that he has not fallen by my hands, and
that they, the subtle and traitorous movers of this
daring prosecution, have withdrawn him for a season
only to effect my ruin. Let the clerk swear the
counsel for the prosecution; I demand him to take
his place on that stand as my first witness in this
cause.”

The effect of this brief and bold appeal upon every
one present was perfectly astounding. Its influence
in our time can only be appreciated by remembering
how generally the taint of disaffection
attached to the upper classes of society in the Province
of New-York, and how withering to character
was the charge of Toryism, unless the suspicion
could be instantly wiped away. It would seem,
too—though Greyslaer had only ventured upon this
desperate effort to turn the tables upon his persecutors
in momentary suspicion that he was unfairly
dealt with—it would seem that there was really
some foundation for the charge of secret disaffection
which he so boldly launched against his wily foe.
For the lawyer turned as pale as death at the words
wherewith the speech of Max concluded; and he
leaned over and whispered to the judge with a degree
of agitation which was so evident to every one
who looked on, that his altered demeanour had the
most unfavourable effect for the cause of the prosecution.
What he said was inaudible, but its purport
might readily be surmised from the bench announcing,
after a brief colloquy, “that the prisoner
was in deep error in supposing that the counsel for

the prosecution was animated by any feeling of
personal hostility toward him. That learned gentleman
had only attempted to perform the painful
duty which had devolved on him, to the best of his
ability, as the representative of a public officer now
absent, who was an immediate servant of the people.
As an individual merely, the known benevolence
of that gentleman would induce him to wish
every indulgence granted to the prisoner; and,
even in his present capacity, he had but now interceded
with the bench for a suspension of the trial until
time might be given for the production of the documents
which the accused deemed essential to his
defence. The court itself was grieved to think
that the prisoner at the bar had forfeited all title to
such indulgence by the unbecoming language he
had just used in questioning the fairness with which
it came to sit upon this trial; but the situation of
the prisoner, his former patriotic services, and his
general moderation of character, must plead in excusing
this casual outbreak of his feelings, if no intentional
indignity or disrespect to the court was
intended. These documents, however, it is supposed,
will be forthcoming as soon as—”

“Jist as soon, yere honour—axing yere honour's
pardon—jist as soon as those powdered fellows with
long white poles in their hands will make room for
a chap to get through this tarnal biling o' people and
come up to yonder table.”

“Make way there, officer, for that red-faced man
with a bald head, who is holding up those papers
over the heads of the crowd at the door,” cried the
good-natured judge to the tipstaff, the moment he
discovered the source whence came the unceremonious
interruption.

“Stand aside, will ye, manny?” said Balt, now
elbowing his way boldly through the crowd; “don't

ye see it's the judge himself there that wants me?
Haven't ye kept me long enough here, bobbing up
and down to catch the eye of the major? Make way,
I say, feller-citerzens. I'm blowed if I wouldn't
as lief run the gauntlet through as many wild Injuns.
Lor! how pesky hot it is,” concluded the
countryman, wiping his brow as he got at last within
the railing which surrounded the bar.

“Come, come, my good fellow,” said the judge,
“I saw you holding up some papers just now at
the door; why don't you produce them, and tell us
where they came from?”

“Came from? Why, where else but out of the
brass beaufet where I placed 'em myself, I should
like to know! and where I found this pocketbook
of the major's, which I thought it might be well to
bring along with me, seeing I had to break the lock,
and it might, therefore, be no longer safe where I
found it.”

“The pocketbook! That contains the very paper
I want,” cried Greyslaer.

“I doesn't hold all on 'em you'd like to see
though, I guess, major,” said Balt, handing him a
packet, which Max straightway opened before turning
to the pocketbook, and ran his eye over the papers:

“Memorandum of a release granted by Henry
Fenton to the heirs of, &c.; notes of lands sold by
H. F. in township No. 7, range east, &c., &c.;” murmured
Max; and then added aloud, “these appear
to be merely some private papers of the late Mr.
Fenton, with which I have no concern; but here is a
document—” said he, opening the pocketbook.

“One moment, one moment, major,” cried Balt,
anxiously; “I can't read written-hand, so I brought
'em all to ye to pick out from; but I mistrust it must
be there if you look carefully, for I made out the

word Max, with a big G after it, when I first took
those papers from the clothes of Mr. Fenton.”

Greyslaer turned over the papers again with a
keener interest, and the next moment read aloud:

The deposition, whose substance was given in
this endorsement, need not be here recapitulated;
and the reader is already in possession of the letter
from Bettys to Bradshawe, sufficiently explaining
their first abduction of Miss De Roos,[6] which letter
Greyslaer straightway produced from the pocketbook,
and read aloud in open court. The strong
emotion which the next instant overwhelmed him
as he sank back into his seat, prevented Max from
adding any comment to this unanswerable testimony,
which so instantly wiped every blot from the
fair fame of his betrothed.

As for Balt, he only folded his arms, and looked
sternly around to see if one doubting look could
be found among that still assemblage; but the next

moment, as he rightly interpreted the respectful
silence which pervaded the place, he buried his face
in his hat, to hide the tears which burst from his
eyes and coursed down his rude and furrowed
cheeks.

The counsel for the prosecution—who, with an
air of courtesy and feeling, at once admitted the authenticity
of these documents—was the first that
broke the stillness of the scene. And his voice rose
so musically soft in a beautiful eulogium upon the
much-injured lady, whose story had for the moment
concentrated every interest, that his eloquence was
worthy of a far better heart than his; but, gradually
changing the drift of his discourse, he brought it back
once more to the prisoner, and reminded the jury that
the substantial part of the evidence upon which he
had been arraigned was as forcible as ever. The
motives for Bradshawe's destruction at the hands of
the accused was proved even more strongly than
before. There was no man present but must feel
that the prisoner had been driven to vengeance by
temptation such as the human heart could scarcely
resist. But, deep as must be our horror at Bradshawe's
villany, and painfully as we must sympathize
with the betrothed husband of that cruelly-outraged
lady, there was still a duty to perform
to the law. The circumstances which had been
proved might induce the gentlemen of the jury to
recommend the prisoner to the executive for some
mitigation of a murderer's punishment, but they
could not otherwise affect the verdict which it was
their stern and sworn duty to render.

“And you don't mean to let the major go, arter
all?” said Balt, addressing himself to the lawyer
with little show of respect, as the latter concluded
his harangue.

“Silence, sir, silence; take your seat,” said a
tipstaff, touching Balt on the shoulder.

“And why haven't I as good a right to speak here
as that smooth-tongued chap?”

“You must keep silence, my worthy fellow,” said
the judge. “I shall be compelled to order an officer
to remove you if you interrupt the proceedings
by speaking again.”

“But I will speak again,” said Balt, slapping his
hat indignantly upon the table. “I say, you Mister
Clark there, take the Bible and qualify me.
I'm going into that witnesses' box. You had better
find out whether Wat Bradshawe is dead or no
afore you hang the major for killing on him.”

But the relation which Balt had to give is too important
to come in at the close of a chapter, and it
may interest the reader sufficiently to have it detailed
with somewhat more continuity than it was
now disclosed by the worthy woodsman.

14. CHAPTER XIV.
CONCLUSION.

Lucy Hooper.

Leaving Balt to tell the court in his own way the
particulars of his first encounter in the forest, we
will take up his story from the moment when the
broken revelation of the wounded Bettys prompted
the woodsman to hurry back to the Hawksnest,
where he had deposited the papers of the deceased
Mr. Fenton, as mentioned in the twelfth chapter of
the second book of this authentic history.

As Balt approached the neighbourhood of the
Hawksnest, he found the whole country in alarm.
A runner had been despatched from Fort Stanwix,
warning the people of that bold and extraordinary
inroad of a handful of refugees which took place
early in the summer of 1778, when, swelling their
ranks by the addition to their number of more than
one skulking outlaw and many secret Tories, who
had hitherto continued to reside upon the Mohawk,
the royalists succeeded in carrying off both booty
and prisoners to Canada, disappearing from the valley
as suddenly as they came.

Teondetha was the agent who brought the news

of the threatened incursion, but the movements of
the refugees were so well planned that they managed
to strike only those points where the warning came
too late. They were heard of at one settlement,
when they had already slaughtered the men, carried
off the women and children, and burned another;
and, indeed, so rapid were their operations, that
the presence of these destroyers was felt at a dozen
different points almost simultaneously. They were
first seen in their strength near Fort Hunter; they
desolated the farmhouses between there and “Fonda's
Bush,” swept the remote settlements upon
either side of their northern progress, and finally disappeared
at the “Fish-house” on the Sacondaga.

The historian seems to have preserved no trace
of their being anywhere resisted, so astounding was
the surprise of the country people at this daring invasion;
but tradition mentions one instance at least
where their inroad received a fatal check.

Balt, who, as we have said, was hurrying to the
Hawksnest to procure the papers which, while clearing
the fair fame of Alida, have already given so
important a turn to the trial of Greyslaer, instantly
claimed the aid of Teondetha to protect the property
of his friend in the present exigence; and, with
Christian Lansingh and two or three others, these experienced
border warriors threw themselves into the
mansion, and prepared to defend it until the storm
had passed by.

Nor was the precaution wasted; for their preparations
for defence were hardly completed, the lapse
of a single night passed away, when, with the morrow's
dawn, a squad of Tory riders was seen galloping
across the pastures by the river-side, with no
less a person than Walter Bradshawe himself, now
well-mounted and completely armed, riding at their
head. He had fallen in with these brother partisans

while trying to effect his escape across the frontier,
obtained the command of a dozen of the most desperate
among them, and readily induced his followers,
by the hope of booty, to make an attack upon the
Hawksnest. Whether the belief that Alida was
still dwelling there induced him to make one more
desperate effort to seize her person, or whether he
only aimed at striking some daring blow ere he left
the country in triumph—a blow which would make
his name a name of terror long upon that border—
it is now impossible to say. But there, by the cold
light of early dawn, Balt soon distinguished him at
the head of his gang of desperadoes.

Early as was the hour, Teondetha had already
crept out to scout among the neighbouring hills; and
Balt, aware of his absence, felt now a degree of
concern about his fate which he was angry at himself
at feeling for a “Redskin;” though somehow,
almost unknowingly, he had learned to love the
youth. He had, indeed, no apprehension that the
Oneida had been already taken by these more than
savage men; but as the morning mist, which rolled up
from the river, had most probably hitherto prevented
Teondetha from seeing their approach, Balt feared
that he might each moment present himself upon
the lawn in returning to the house, and catch the
eye of Bradshawe's followers while unconscious of
the danger that hovered near.

The scene that followed was, however, so quickly
over, that the worthy woodsman had but little time
for farther reflection.

Bradshawe had evidently expected to obtain possession
of the house before any of the family had
arisen or warning of his approach was received;
and, dividing his band as he neared the premises,
a part of his men circled the dwelling and galloped
up a lane which would lead them directly across

the lawn toward the front door of the house, while
the rest, wheeling off among the meadows, presented
themselves at the same time in the rear.

The force of Balt was too small to make a successful
resistance against this attack, had the Tories
expected any opposition, or had they been determined
to carry the house even after discovering that it
was defended. His rifles were so few in number
that they were barely sufficient to defend one side
of the house at a time; and, though both doors and
windows were barricaded, the woodsman and his
friends could not long have sustained themselves under
a simultaneous assault upon each separate point.

Balt, however, did not long hesitate how to receive
the enemy; his only doubt seemed to be, for
the moment, which party would soonest come within
reach of his fire.

“Kit Lansingh,” he cried, the instant he saw the
movement from his look-out place in the gable, “look
ye from the front windows, and see if the gate that
opens from the lane upon the lawn be closed or no.
Quick, as ye love yere life, Kit.”

“The gate's shut. They slacken their pace—they
draw their bridles—they fear to leap,” shouted Kit
the next instant in reply. “No—they leap; ah!
it's only one of them—Bradshawe; but he has not
cleared it; the gate crashes beneath his horse; his
girths are broken; and now they all dismount to let
their horses step over the broken bars.”

“Enough, enough, Kit. Spring now, lads, to the
back windows, and each of you cover your man as
the riders from the meadows come within shot.
But, no! never mind taking them separately,” cried
Balt, as his party gained the windows. “Not yet,
not yet; when they double that corner of fence.
Now, now, as they wheel, as they double, take them
in range. Are you ready? Let them have it.”

A volley from the house as Balt spoke instantly
emptied several saddles; and the on-coming troopers,
recoiling in confusion at the unexpected attack,
turned their backs and gained a safe distance as
quickly as possible.

“Now, lads,” shouted Balt, “load for another
peppering in the front;” and already the active borderers
have manned the upper windows on the opposite
side of the house.

But the assailants here, startled by the sound of
firearms and the rolling smoke which they see issuing
from the rear of the house, hang back, and
will not obey the behests of their leader, who vainly
tries to cheer them on to the attack. In vain does
Bradshawe coax, conjure, and threaten. His followers
have caught sight of their friends drawing off
with diminished numbers toward the end of the
house. They see the gleaming rifle-barrels protruding
through the windows. They cluster together,
and talk eagerly for a moment, unheeding the
frantic appeals of their leader; and now, with less
hesitation than before, they have leaped the broken
barrier of the gate, and are in full retreat down the
lane.

“One moment, one moment, boys; it's a long
shot, but we'll let them have a good-by as they turn
off into the pasture. Ah, I feared it was too far for
the best rifle among us,” added Balt, as the troopers,
apparently untouched by the second volley, still galloped
onward.

“God's weather! though, but that chap on the
roan horse has got it, uncle,” cried Lansingh, the
next moment, as he saw a horseman reel in the saddle,
while others spurred to his side, and upheld the
wounded man. “My rifle against a shot-gun that
that chap does not cross the brook.”

“To the window in the gable then, boys, if you

would see the Tory fall,” exclaimed Balt, as the
flying troopers became lost to their view from the
front windows. “Tormented lightning! you've lost
your rifle, Kit; they are all over the brook.”

“No, there's a black horse still fording it,” cried
Lansingh, eagerly. “It's Bradshawe's horse; I
know it from the dangling girths he drags after
him. He has gained the opposite bank; his horse
flounders in the slippery clay; no, he turns and
waves his hand at something. He sees us; he
waves it in scorn. Oh! for a rifle that would bring
him now.”

And, even as Lansingh spoke, the sharp report
of a rifle, followed by a sudden howl of pain and
defiance, rung out on the still morning air. The
trooper again rises in his saddle and shakes his
clenched fist at some unseen object in the bushes.
The next moment he disappears in a thicket beyond;
and now, again, the black horse has emerged
once more into the open fields; but he scours along
the slope beyond, bare-backed and masterless; the
saddle has turned, and left the wounded rider at the
mercy of that unseen foe!

Not five minutes could have elapsed before Balt
and his comrades had reached the spot where
Bradshawe disappeared from their view; but the
dying agonies of the wounded man were already
over; and, brief as they were, yet horrible must have
been the exit of his felon soul. The ground for
yards around him was torn and muddled with his
gore, as if the death-struggles of a bullock had been
enacted there. His nails were clutched deep into
the loamy soil, and his mouth was filled with the
dust which he had literally bitten in his agony.
The yeomen gazed with stupid wonder upon the
distorted frame and muscular limbs—so hideously
convulsed when the strong life was leaving them—

and one of them stooped to raise and examine the
head, as if still doubtful that it was the terrible
Bradshawe who now lay so helpless before them.
But the crown of locks had been reft from the gory
scull, and the face (as is known to be the case with
a scalped head) had slipped down, so that the features
were no longer visible.

The next moment the Oneida emerged from the
bushes with a couple of barbarous Indian trophies
at his belt; and subsequent examination left not a
doubt that both Bradshawe and the other wounded
trooper had been despatched by the brave but demi-savage
Teondetha.

Such were the essential particulars of Bradshawe's
real fate, as now made known by him who
beheld his fall.

The court had given an order for the instant release
of the prisoner, and the clerk had duly made
it out long before the narrative of the worthy woodsman
was concluded; but the relation of Balt excited
a deep sensation throughout that crowded chamber,
and the presiding judge for some moments
found it impossible to repress the uproarious enthusiasm
with which this full exculpation of the prisoner
at the bar was received by the spectators.
Those who were nearest to the prisoner—the members
of the bar and other gentlemen—the whole
jury in a body, rose from their seats and rushed
forward to clasp his hand; and it was only Greyslaer
himself who could check the excitement of the
multitude and prevent them from bearing him off
in triumph upon their shoulders. His voice, however,
at last stilled the tumult, so that a few words
from the bench could be heard. They were addressed,
not to the prisoner, but to Balt himself.

“And pray tell me, my worthy fellow,” said the
judge, with moistened eyes, “why you did not,

when first called to the stand, testify at once to the
impossibility of this Bradshawe having fallen by the
hand of our gallant friend, for whose unmerited sufferings
not even the triumphant joy of this moment
can fully compensate? Why did you not arrest
these most painful proceedings the moment it was
in your power?”

“And yere honour don't see the caper on't, raaly?
You think I might have got Major Max out of this
muss a little sooner by speaking up at onct, eh?
Well, I'll tell ye the hull why and wherefore, yere
honour;” and the worthy woodsman, laying one
brown and brawny hand upon the rail before him,
looked round with an air of pardonable conceit at
finding such a multitude of well-dressed people
hanging upon his words, cleared his throat once or
twice, and thus bespoke himself:

“I owned a hound onct, gentlemen, as slick a
dog as ever you see, any on ye; for the like o' that
brute was not in old Tryon; and one day, when
hunting among the rocky ridges around Konnedieyu,[7]
or Canada Creek, as some call it, I missed the
critter for several hours. I looked for him on the
hathes above, and I clomb down into the black
chasm, where the waters pitch, and leap, and fling
about so sarcily, and sprangle into foam agin the
walls on airy side. It was foolish, that's a fact, to
look for him there; for the eddies are all whirlpools;
and if, by chance, he had got into the stream, why,
instead of being whirled about and chucked on
shore, as I hoped for, the poor critter would have
been sucked under, smashed on the rocky bottom,
and dragged off like all natur. And so I thought
when I got near enough for my eyes to look fairly
into those black holes, with a twist of foam around

them, that seemed to screw, as it were, right down
through the yaller water of Konnedieyu.

“But now I hears a whimper in the bushes above
me. I looks up to the top of the precipice against
which I'm leaning, and there, on a ledge of rock
about midway, what do I see but the head of the
very hound I was in sarch of peering out from the
stunted hemlocks that grew in the crevices. To
holp him from below was impossible; so I went
round and got to the top of the hathe. The dog
was now far below me, and it was a putty risky business
to let myself down the face of the cliff to the
ledge where he was. The critter might get up to
me full as easily as I could get down to him; for
here and there were little sloping zigzag cleets of
rock broad enough for the footing of a dog, but
having no bushes near by which a man could steady
his body while balancing along the face of the cliff.
They leaned over each other, too, with breadth
enough for a dog to pass between, but not for a man
to stand upright.

“I whistled to the dog: `Why in all thunder does
the old hound not come up when I call?' says I to
myself, says I. `By the everlasting hokey, if he
hasn't got one foot in a painter[8] trap,' said I the next
moment, as I caught sight of the leather thong by
which some Redskin had fixed the darned thing to
the rock. I ups rifle at onct, and had hand on trigger
to cut the string with a bullet. `Stop, old Balt,
what are ye doing?' says I agin afore I let fly.
`The dumb brute, to be sure, will be free if you
clip that string at onçt, as you know you can. But
the teeth of the trap have cut into his flesh already;
will you run the chance of its farther mangling him,
and making the dog of no valu to any one by letting

him drag that cursed thing after him when he gets
away? No! rayther let him hang on there a few
moments as he is, till you can go judgmatically to
work to free him.' With that I let the suffering
critter wait until I had cut down a tree, slanted it
from the top of the cliff to the ledge where he lay,
got near enough to handle him, uncoiled the leather
thong that had got twisted round him, sprung the
trap from his bleeding limb, and holped him to some
purpose.

“Now, yere honour, think ye that, if I had not
waited patiently till all this snarl about Miss Alida
had been disentagled afore Major Max got free,
he would not have gone away from this court with
something still gripping about his heart, as I may
say; something to which the steel teeth of that
painter trap, hows'ever closely they might set, were
marciful, as I may say? Sarting! sarting he would.
But now every one has heard here all that man,
woman, and child can say agin her. And here, in
open court, with all these book-larnt gentlemen, and
yere honour at their head, to sift the business, we've
gone clean to the bottom of it, and brought out her
good name without a spot upon it.”

We will leave the reader to imagine the effect
which this homely but not ineloquent speech of the
noble-minded woodsman produced upon the court,
upon the spectators, and upon him who was most
nearly interested in what the speaker said.

The reader must imagine, too, the emotions of
Alida when Max and she next met, and Greyslaer
made her listen to the details of the trial from the
lips of his deliverer; while Balt, pausing ever and
anon as he came to some particular which he scarcely
knew how to put in proper language for her ears,
would at last get over the difficulty by flatly asserting
that he “disremembered exactly what the bloody

lawyer said jist at this part, but the major could tell
her that in by-times.”

Those by-times, as Balt so quaintly called them,
those sweet and secret interchanges of heart with
heart, that full and blessed communion of prosperous
and happy love, came at last for Max and Alida.

They were wedded in the autumn, at that delicious
season of our American climate when a second
spring, less fresh, less joyous than that of the
opening year, but gentler, softer, and—though the
herald of bleak winter—less changeable and more
lasting, comes over the land; when the bluebird
comes back again to carol from the cedar top, and
the rabbit from the furze, the squirrel upon the chestnut
bough, prank it away as merrily as when the
year was new; when the doe loiters in the forest
walk as the warm haze hides her from the hunter's
view, and the buck admires his antlers in the
glassy lake which the breeze so seldom ripples;
when Nature, like her own wild creatures, who conceal
themselves in dying, covers her face with a
mantle so glorious that we heed not the parting life
beneath it. They were wedded, then, among those
sober but balmy hours, when love like theirs might
best receive its full reward.

Thenceforward the current of their days was as
calm as it had hitherto been clouded; and both Max
and Alida, in realizing the bounteous mercies which
brightened their after lives, as well as in remembering
the dark trials they had passed through; the fearful
discipline of the character of the one, the brief
but bitter punishment of a single lapse from virtue
in the other—that Heaven-sent punishment, which
but heralded a crowning mercy—both remained
henceforth among those who acknowledge

Our story ends here. The fate of the other characters
who have been principally associated in its
progress is soon told. Isaac Brant, as is related in
the biography of his father, perished ultimately by
the hand of that only parent, whose life he had several
times attempted, and who thus most singularly
wrought out the curse which the elder De Roos
had pronounced against him in dying. Of Thayendanagea,
or Brant himself, we need say nothing
farther here, as the full career of that remarkable
person is sufficiently commemorated elsewhere.
The two Johnsons must likewise at this point be
yielded up to the charities of the historians who have
recorded their ruthless deeds throughout the Valley
of the Mohawk in the subsequent years of the war.
The redoubtable Joe Bettys did not close his career
quite so soon as might have been expected from the
disastrous condition in which we last left him; but,
recovering from his wound under the care of the
presumed teamster to whom Balt had intrusted
him, and who turned out to be a secret partisan of
the faction to which Bettys belonged, the worthy
Joe made his escape across the frontier. He lived
for some years afterward, and, after committing
manifold murders and atrocities, he finally finished
his career upon the scaffold at the close of the war.
The striking incidents of his capture are told elsewhere
with sufficient minuteness.[9] Old Wingear
was attainted as a traitor, and died of mortification
from the loss of his property. Syl Stickney, the only
Tory, we believe, yet to be disposed of, attempted
once or twice to desert to his old friends, considering
himself bound for the time for which he had enlisted,

though both Bradshawe, his leader, and Valtmeyer,
who had enlisted him, were dead. When
the term expired, however, he did not hesitate to
join the Whigs, with whom he fought gallantly till
the close of the war, and received a grant of land in
the western part of the state for the active services
he rendered in Sullivan's famous campaign against
the Indian towns. It was doubtless this Sylla and
his brother Marius, who, calling each a settlement
after themselves, set the example of giving those
absurd classic names to our western villages, which
have cast such an air of ridicule over that flourishing
region of the state of New-York.

It remains only to speak of the affectionate-hearted
Balt, whose only foible, if so it may be called,
was, that he never could abide a Redskin. His
nephew, Christian Lansingh, marrying the gentle
Tavy Wingear, succeeded to the public-house of
her father after the attainder of the hypocritical deacon
had been reversed in his favour. And there, by
the inn fireside, long after the war was over, old
Balt, with pipe in mouth, used to delight to fight his
battles over for the benefit of the listening traveller.
The evening of his days, however, was spent chiefly
at the Hawksnest. Greyslaer, soon after his marriage,
had embraced the tender of a mission to one
of the southern courts of Europe, with which government
honoured him. The health of Alida had
been seriously impaired by her mental sufferings;
and though loath to relinquish the active part he had
hitherto taken in the great struggle of his country,
Max was glad to be able to devote himself in a different
way to her interests, where Alida would have
the benefit of a more genial clime. But in the
peaceful years that followed his return, many was
the pleasant hunt, many the loitering tour that he
and old Balt had together among the romantic hills

and bright trout-streams to the north of his demesnes;
and many the token of kindness from Alida
to the Spreading Dew, which Max carried with him
on these excursions, when the rapid disappearance
of game in his own level country induced Teondetha
to shift his wigwam to these mountain solitudes.

Of Guisbert or Guise, as the “Bois-brulé,” or
half-blood child was generally called, we have as
yet been enabled to gather but few traditions; but
we may perhaps make farther attempts to trace his
fortunes, and possibly hereafter present the reader
with the result of our researches in another tale of
The American Border.