University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.
THE DISCOVERY.

MS. Poem.

The sun was just rising on the morrow, when Dolph
Pierson aroused the friends from the unusually heavy
slumbers, which had fallen upon them in consequence
of the severe fatigue and excitement of the past day.
But once awakened, they were on foot and alert on the
instant, and having speedily despatched the ample cold
breakfast which was set before them, Harry and Forester
got under way with the Dutch hunter. Old Tom,
who was completely overdone by the tramp he had
undergone, and by the disgust he had encountered in
being beaten so disgracefully in spite of all his bragging,
prepared to lie by, and try his luck at the Pickerel
and Pearch, for which the lake above was famous.

Taught by his yesterday's experience, Master Frank
had donned, in lieu of his bright pea-green hunting-shirt,
a dingy fustian shooting-jacket, with breeches of

the same material; nay! he had even concocted some dark-coloured
composition with which to dim the bright silver
mountings of his rifle. Dolph looked at him for a moment
with one of his grun approving smiles, and then turned toward
Archer with a wink so inexpressibly ludicrous, that
he could not restrain himself, but burst into a fit of obstreperous
mirth; whereat Frank, wheeling upon the culprits
unexpectedly, took them both in the fact, and shaking his
fist at them good-humouredly—

“You villains!” he, exclaimed, “what deuced trick are
you playing off upon me now? Out with it, instantly, and
I'll forgive you; but if I find it out hereafter, my name is
not Frank Forester, if I don't pay you back, with interest.”

“No trick, upon my honour, Frank,” replied Archer.
“Nor much joke, either, for that matter. At least what
joke there was is past and over. But come, let us get into
the drag, which Timothy has got at the door, and I'll tell
you all about it as we drive to the bridge over the Black
Creek.”

“Yes! yes!” said Pierson, who had resumed all his habitual
gravity; “we've got no time to lose, for it's gittin'
to be broad day, now, and we should be in the woods afore
the dew's off, inyhow.”

Within two minutes, one of which was consumed in
donning upper benjamins and lighting pipes or manillas,
according to the various tastes of the sportsmen, the two
friends were mounted on the front seat, Dolph and Timothy
occupying that in the rear. The horses sprang at Harry's
cheerful whistle, and away rattled the light vehicle, over
the well-made limestone road, in the same direction which
had been taken by Forester and Tom Draw on the previous
morning.

“Now then, the joke, Harry!” said Forester.

“Pshaw! it was mere nonsense. Dolph wanted to put
you out of conceit yesterday with your fine toggery and
bright gun-mountings and I begged him not. That's all,
upon my honour!”

“That's all, upon your honour! and a very modest all,
too! So you spoiled my day's sport, and won Tom's bet,
just to poke fun on me! By Jove, that's too bad! I
should not have expected that, at your hands!” and Frank's

face flushed even to the roots of his hair, as he spoke, from
very anger.

“Nor I this at yours, Forester,” replied Archer, gravely.
“But it is of no use minding what you say, you little wasp.
I would not let him tell you, because I knew right well that
if your costume or your skill in woodcraft were attacked,
you would defend them, like Decatur, right or wrong, and
wear them, to the ruin of your sport, for a week, perhaps
for ever, from the sheer love of paradox. Whereas, by
letting you alone, I knew that one day's experience would
teach you the truth, and that you would adopt it, as you
have done. I think it was the friend's part.”

“By gin! that's jest what he telled me, Mr. Forester,”
put in Dolph Pierson, “and jest what I could a' telled you,
only he's worded it some better nor I could. So don't be
vexed with him, noways.”

“It was but a poor compliment to my reason, at all
events,” said Forester, who had been too much discomposed
to resume his equanimity on the instant.

“But a very good one to your aptitude at taking hints
from experience,” replied Harry. “Come, don't be sulky,
old boy; between you and me, that would be something
too inexpressibly absurd.”

There was no resisting this; so Frank gave his friend
an amicable dig in the ribs, that would have pretty nearly
knocked the wind out of a rhinoceros, and said, “All right,
old fellow; but do you really think I never take advice?”

“I think that if you did you would be a prodigy. I
never saw a man who asked for advice until he had made
his mind fully up how he should act, at all events. Now,
you had not asked advice, but thought you knew, as you
said when you drove poor McTavish ten miles above the
saw-mill turn to Warwick, responding only `Don't I
know?' to all his suggestions that you were out of the road,
all his entreaties that you would inquire your way. `Don't
I knew?' carried you that night to Coffee's Tavern, in the
Cove, when you would surely have discovered your mistake
at the bridge, if he had not pointed out your error, and so
roused your spirit of resistance and set you on the defensive.
`Don't I know?' would have kept you in green and silver

to-day, if I had let Dolph speak to you. You ought to be
very much obliged to me, for now you do know!”

“And I am very much obliged to you; and, faith! I
believe, after all, that one lesson learned of that hard
teacher, Experience, is better than a dozen from that soft
persuader, Good Advice. For my part, I only hope that
you will always stick to your new system; for in very
deed I think good advisers are the most odious persons in
the universe.”

“I will; depend upon it, Frank. So far at all events as
you are concerned. I made my mind up to that long
enough ago.”

“Look here, Harry; this is the cottage, I spoke of to you
last night, that we are just coming to, on the right-hand side.
Cannot you frame some excuse to stop? I have a curiosity
to see something farther.”

“And I. Look quietly behind, and see if Dolph's pipe is
out; Timothy is not smoking.”

“It is. He has just put it into his pouch,” replied Forester,
after casting a furtive glance behind him.

“And I threw mine away, half a mile back. Drop yours,
as if by accident, get out another, and ask Dolph for a light;
and, as I know he has got no flint for his tinder, apply to
me in the second place, and as I have forgotten my matches,
we shall have to pull up and ask for what Dolph would
term a coal of fire.”

No sooner said than done. The cigar was dropped as
if accidentally, and the next moment Forester took out his
cigar-case, selected a cheroot, and, turning his head to old
Pierson, said aloud,

“Give us a light, old fellow. I have lost mine.”

“My pipe is out too,” replied the old hunter; “it has
not been alight these ten minutes.”

“Ah! we must try a match, then. Come, Harry, out
with the Lucifers, lad!”

For a minute or two Archer affected to search in the
various pockets of his great box-coat for the desired matchcase,
but at length, with a negative shake of the head, he
made answer—

“It is no go, Master Frank. I have forgotten my matchcase
at home; and a devilish stupid forget it is; for I don't

see how the plague we are to get lights, any how. No
more smoking at all for this day.”

“I never can stand that,” said Frank; “I can as well
get along without a drink. Oh! look you, here's a cottage,
Harry; pull up, and we'll beg for a light there. By
Jove!” he added, as if he had been surprised, “it is the
place where the pretty woman lives, about whom we were
speaking.”

“It is so,” answered Harry, gravely. “Well, we will
get a light; but mark me, no chaffing.”

“Chaffing!” replied Frank, quickly, “I should think
not of that, indeed; what the deuce should have put such
a thought as that into your head?”

“You know you're good at it sometimes, Frank,” replied
Archer, with a grave smile. “But don't get savage; I did
not mean to offend your high mightiness!”

And as he spoke he pulled up the horses at the door of
the cottage, which had once evidently been extremely neat
and pretty, with a portico of rustic make, all overrun with
evergreens and flowery creepers. It had, however, although
still comparatively a new building, already fallen into partial
decay, and exhibited those symptoms by which a keen
observer would easily judge that the master of the house
was a drunkard, or the mistress a slattern.

“What ails you, to be stoppin' here, Mister Aircher?”
asked the old hunter shortly, and in a tone which indicated
anything but pleasure at the occurrence; “we hain't no
business here, none on us—this is whar' Harry Barhyte
lives, as I telled you on.”

“I know it, Dolph,” replied Archer, “but we have all
lost our fire, and we have brought no matches with us,
and Frank here for the life of him can't walk the day
through without smoking.”

“There won't come no luck on it, nohow,” responded
the hunter. “If so be I'd a knowed this, I'd a brought
you by the other road.”

“Pshaw! nonsense!” replied Archer; “what harm can
come of it, any way? Halloa!” he added, raising his
voice, “is there any one at home?”

Almost as quickly as he spoke, the woman came to the
door. She was, as Frank had described her on the previous

day, a singularly beautiful, and, for her class in life, a singularly
delicate-looking creature, with a quantity of soft light
brown hair falling in dishevelled, and, to speak the truth,
somewhat disordered masses down her neck; large blue
eyes; a fair complexion; and a figure of slender yet symmetrical
proportion.

For all this, however, her appearance and the impression
she produced on the minds of the young men were the very
reverse of attractive or agreeable. There was a bold eager
look in her eye when it met theirs directly that struck them
as immodest and offensive, and a sidelong glance yet more
obnoxious, as she lowered her lids in a sort of affected medesty
as Archer addressed her.

Her dress, moreover, was unseemly, at least when viewed
in relation to her place of abode in a remote rural district
amid wild mountains, and to her condition in life, for it had
been originally of expensive materials, and rather tawdry
colours, and had been fashioned to display the shape, and
reveal far more of the neck and bosom than is usual among
country maids or matrons.

“Pardon us for troubling you, madam,” said Harry, removing
his hunting-cap; “but we have lost our light, and
called to see if you would have the goodness to let us have
a coal of your fire?”

“No trouble, sir, I assure you!” she replied, with a very
peculiar glance, and a still more peculiar expression of
voice. “I shall always be too glad to oblige you in anything
which you can ask me.”

And, without waiting for an answer, she tripped into the
house, and returned almost instantly, bearing in the tongs
a piece of a blazing brand of wood, which she handed to
Archer, who passed it over to Frank, and, as if in reply to
her last speech, said, in a friendly familiar voice,

“I am glad to see that you recollect me, Mrs. Barhyte,
for it is a very long time since you sat on my knee when
you were pretty little Mary Marten. I fancied you must
have quite forgotten me.”

“I do not forget so easily, Mr. Archer,” returned the
woman, with the same disagreeable sidelong look—“you
especially;” and then, as if aware that she had gone something
too far, she hesitated a moment or two, and added—

“for those were very happy days; and, whatever folks may
say about it, I think that it is easier to forget sorrow than
happiness.”

“It is a merciful gift of Providence that it is so,” replied
Archer, gravely. “But I am sorry to hear you speak as
if you were not happy. I was quite glad when I heard
you were married to Harry Barhyte, Mary, and thought it
such a nice match. For you were always quite a pet of
mine, and he was my friend—a man I was proud to call
my friend,” he added with marked emphasis.

“That was when he was his own friend, Mr. Archer,”
replied the woman, a little sharply.

“And is he not so, now?”

“He is very much changed; very much, since you knew
him, sir.”

“Ay! is he?” cried the old hunter sternly, and with
more vehemence than he was wont to exhibit; “but what
changed him? Tell us that, Mary Barhyte—tell us what
changed him?”

The woman blushed fiery red, from the very roots of her
hair to the edge of her dress, and drooped her eyes and
kept silence, abashed and humbled.

In her eagerness to coquette with the two gay young men
who sat on the front seat, she had not spared a glance to
the inferior personages behind, and consequently had not
discovered the presence of Dolph Pierson.

“And where is Harry Barhyte, now?” said Archer, who
while observing everything closely, had pretended to be engaged
solely in lighting his cheroot. “I should like to see
him, before I leave the country.”

“He is out with his rifle after deer,” she said, raising her
eyes again to Archer's, with a half look of invitation; “I
scarce know which way he is gone. I think he said toward
the Eagle Rock. But if you call in after dark this evening,
you'll be pretty like to find him.”

“And is Ned Wheeler away with him, too?” asked the
old hunter, with a peculiar intonation.

“What would I know about Ned Wheeler?” she asked,
very angrily, instead of answering directly; but then,
after a moment's pause, as if something flashed upon her
mind, she added, quickly: “No, he is not away with him;

Henry's been gone since daylight, and Ned passed the door,
with his gun in his hand, not ten minutes since; you'll
overtake him, I reckon.”

“Passed the door, did he?—he don't often do that, doos
he, Mary?”

“I told him Henry wasn't in.”

“Hum-hum! and that was the cause why he passed it,
hey? I'd a thought now as he'd likely a comed in and sot
a spell, to git a light for his pipe like, or a drink—”

“We don't keep no drink here, Mr. Pierson; and you
know that as well I do.”

“I don't know nothen on the airth about it, nor don't
warn't to, Mary. You can't say as I iver was inside your
doors.”

“Nor I don't wont to see you there!” she replied almost
fiercely, with a gleam of flashing anger in her bold eyes;
but then turning to Harry, “but you, sir, I shall be glad
to see at any time; and so will Henry, for he speaks of
you very often.”

“I thank you; I will call if I do not meet him to-day.
Good-morning to you!” and once more touching his cap,
he gave his good steeds their head, and away they bowled
up the road toward the base of the wooded hills that towered
above them in huge billow-swells of many-coloured
foliage.

They had driven perhaps a couple of miles at a slashing
trot, not holding much conversation among themselves, for
the past interview had set them all to thinking pretty deeply,
and a sort of inexplicable gloom hung over the whole
party, when they overtook a tall slouching shambling-gaited
fellow, carrying a long rifle in his hand, and proceeding
in the same direction with themselves.

“Who have we here, Dolph?” asked Archer, who having
his eye well forward on the road, was the first to catch
sight of him.

“Black Ned! don't you see how he snoops along, like
no honest man would?”

Harry smiled at the rough hunter's attributing the trick
of the man's gait, the result probably of the wound to which
he had himself alluded, to certain mental qualities; but
knowing the uselessness of arguing such points with one

at the same time so single-minded and so prejudiced as
Pierson, he made no reply.

A moment afterward, however, as he ran alongside of
the stranger, he checked his horses for the instant, partly
to observe his features, and partly to gain some information.

The first were villanous enough; a low, receding brow,
partially overshadowed by tangled elf-locks of uncombed
black hair, a broken-backed hawk nose, a pair of keen,
cunning, cruel, down-looking black eyes, a thin-lipped,
compressed mouth, with a constant stream of tobacco-juice
oozing from its corners. He had not turned his head to
see who were the new-comers, though the clattering trot of
such a team, and the even roll of such a vehicle, were
sounds most unfamiliar to any ear in that tract of country,
nor did he now raise his eyes as the horses shot past him,
and immediately moderated their speed under the guidance
of a master hand.

“Mister Wheeler, I believe?”

“Ned Wheeler is my name; but I don't know yourn, no
how,” was the surly answer.

“Mine is Archer,” replied the young man; “but that
will not help you. I heard you were before us on the
range, and as we shall pass you with our horses, I thought
it fair to inquire, as you have the start, which side of the
road you mean to hunt; I would not wish to interfere with
any man.”

“Well, that's fair, anyhow,” answered the other, though
he looked as if he half suspected a trap. “I did think as
I'd drive over to the right hereaways, toward the black
swamp in the Indian holler. Harry Barhyte, he's gone
along the top to the Eagle Rock, and so he'll be sendin' the
deer down to the swamp, I reckons.”

“We will keep to the left, then,” said Archer. “Good-morning!”

And away he drove, at the same slapping pace as before.

“Now, if I might be so bold, Mister Aircher,” said the
hunter, who had maintained a dogged silence during the
whole of this brief colloquy, “I'd be right well pleased,
anyways, to know why you did that 'ere?”

“Did what, Dolph?”

“Spoke to that ere darned scoundrel at all, fust—and
next, guv him his chice of beats.”

“I wanted to look at him, first, Dolph!”

“You must be tarnal fond of seein' humly sights, then,”
replied Pierson. “You'd be hard set, I guess, to find a
humlier picter atween this and York.”

“He is most villanously ugly, of a truth,” said Harry,
musing. “And is it possible that handsome creature prefers
this vile, low-bred, hideous brute, to so gallant and
tight a lad as Harry Barhyte?”

“Wimen goes pretty much by contraries,” replied Pierson.
“Them as is good to them, they behaves wust to; and
them as conducts wust to them, they niver can love hard
enough. But Harry's e'ena'most as bad as Ned be, now.
But why give him his chice of ground?”

“I had my reason for that, too, Dolph.”

“So I 'xpect—most men has some reason for all the
darned things they do—leastwise they thinks they has, and
that's a'most the same thing. But I'd like to know what
yourn mought 'a bin.”

“I wanted to be sure whither Barhyte has gone; and
whether this dog was going to join him.”

“And do you reckon you're sure now?”

“Pretty sure that Barhyte has gone to the Eagle Rock.
Where is the Eagle Rock, Dolph?”

“Right stret ahead on us, up the big hill yonder. You
see them big black pines up three-parts to the top,” he
added, pointing with his hands; “well, it is right over
them, jist high enough that you can see clear over the tops
on 'em.”

“Is it good laying ground for deer, now?”

“None in the whole range better. All along there the
mountain side is full of springs, and the sile's moist, and
the fern grows up four and six feet high. 'Tain't such
very bad walking nuther, for it's in sort of terraces, one above
another, pretty level like.”

“Well, if you think it good, Dolph, we'll bear off here a
mile or so to the left, that I may keep my word with that
scoundrel, and then we'll strike right up the crags, and
beat those terraces you speak of to the eastward. Will
that suit you?”

“Bravely,” answered the hunter, “though we shan't
see nothin' in the bottom. But a mile off to the left there's
a grand waterfall comes down the hill in a sort of gorge
we can climb pretty easy, and oncet up, thar's three terraces,
one right above the other; so there'll be just one for each
on us, within hailin' distance.”

“All right, then. How much farther have we to go,
Dolph?”

“One mile to the Old Mill corner.”

“Look back, Forester, and see what that scamp is doing;
the road is so straight, he must be in sight still.”

“He is just turning into the covert to the right-hand,”
said Frank. “What the devil do you care about the brute
for?”

“That's more than I can tell you, Master Frank; but
some how or other I've a fancy that something's going to
happen out of the common way to-day. It's all infernal
stuff, I know; for Heaven be thanked, I am not in the least
superstitious, nor do I believe in presentiments; but I cannot
get it out of my head that something horrible is in the wind,
and that this fellow Wheeler is at the bottom of it. It hangs
over me like a black cloud. I never felt so in my life
before.”

“I should think not,” said Forester laughing; “nor I
neither. If I were you, I'd take a good pull at the Ferintosh,
and feel so no more.”

“I don't know but you're right, Frank; and here we are
at the Old Mill, so while Tim is getting out the traps I'll
follow your advice.”

“What you say right is very true; so'll I,” said Forester,
and incontinently they both imbibed moderately; but when
Dolph was invited to follow suit, he shook his head gravely,
and made answer solemnly—

“A warnin' is a warnin', and shouldn't niver be made
light of, no how. I dreamed of nothin' else but blood all
night, and I thought when I riz up this mornin' that blood
there would be; but now that Aircher's got a warnin' tew,
I'm sure on't. God send it mayn't be some of us.”

Forester stared at the man in mute admiration. At first
he thought he was jesting, then he began to imagine that
he had gone mad, but there was as little of insanity in the

[OMITTED] and even old Pierson himself, moulded as he was of castiron,
was flushed and blown with the fatigue.

All three were glad to lie down for half an hour on the
mossy margin of the water to rest them before climbing
the hill, and this time Pierson did not refuse his share of
the moderate cup. Then Harry's match-box having been
discovered in an unusual pocket, all the three smoked a
quiet pipe, and that done, arose, refreshed and ready for a
steep mountain scramble.

Ten minutes' walk thereafter brought them to the mouth
of the gorge in the hills whence the stream issued; and
just before they reached it, Dolph whispered to the two
young men to have their pieces ready, for that the cataract
was close at hand, just round the first angle in the path,
and that there was often a chance of a shot there, when the
run was well up, as it was at this time, the deer coming
down to the cool water to avoid the pursuit of the tormenting
flies.

The gorge itself was bold and fine, the stream rushing
out in a broad sheet of snow-white foam between two great
gray limestone rocks, which towered on either side to the
height of at least a hundred feet, crowned with feathery
crests of hemlock, forming in this place the first step of the
mountain ridge which soared away, clothed to the very top
with forests, well nigh three thousand feet in air.

Following the motions of the wary forester, the sportsmen
entered the pass, thridding a narrow ledge of rock
which ran like an abutment along the base of the mountain
wall, elevated only a few inches above the whirling
foam-flakes.

Within, the gorge wheeled directly to the right, and
along, the right-hand side they stole carefully, with their
fore-fingers on the triggers of their rifles, holding their
breaths in the intensity of their eagerness, and feeling their
hearts knocking hard against their bosoms.

Two more steps brought them to the angle; and facing
them, as the gorge wheeled again upward to the left at
some fifty yards distance, thundered the foaming waterfall.
It was indeed a grand and striking scene; for, although the
height was inconsiderable, not exceeding fifty feet, the volume
of water was considerable, and the fall, dashing on a

flat rock at the foot, flung off a glancing sheet of broken
water in all directions, like the fragments of a crystal mirror.
The accessories too of the wild scene, the black
rocks, the richly feathered evergreens, relieved by the
white spray, and illuminated by one stray sunbeam which
fell almost perpendicularly on the very shoot of the fall,
were all perfect in their colouring and keeping. Add to
this that the roar of the fall, reduplicated by the echoes of
that enclosed amphitheatre, boomed with ten times the
majesty of sound which the same cascade would have
emitted in an open space.

Short time, however, had they to gaze at that moment
on the wonders or the beauties of the spot; for there, on
the very summit of the cataract itself, upon a crag which
split the falling waters into two parts, although at a few
feet below they joined again and descended in one common
volume, there stood as fine a hart as ever gladdened the
eye of deerstalker.

The noble animal was gazing up the glen as Forester
and Harry entered the amphitheatre below him, and consequently
saw nothing of his enemies, whose footsteps were
drowned by the roar of the fall, while the taint of their
presence was swept away from him by the rush of cool air
from the water.

“Hist! hist!” whispered the hunter in low tones.

“Now, Frank,” said Archer in his ear, and with an eye
glistening with excitement, he raised the light Manton rifle
to his eye, took a quick aim, and drew the trigger.

Simultaneously with the crack and flash of the piece, the
noble animal made a quick involuntary plunge, and the soft
thud of the ball, as it struck him, reached the ears of the
sportsmen.

He turned his soft liquid eyes towards his foemen, with
a hoarse, plaintive bleat, and gathered his slender sinewy
limbs to spring across the channel of the fall; but ere he
had time to rise, Harry's unerring weapon flashed, for he
saw that, although Frank's ball had taken effect, the wound
was not mortal.

The heavy ounce ball clove his heart asunder, and in the
very act of leaping, he fell dead upon the very summit of

the cataract, and the next instant was swept down by the
tumultuous waters to the very feet of his conquerors.

The sharp crack of the rifle-shots, in that deep rock-bound
chasm, bellowed almost like the roar of ordnance,
and soaring upward were repeated by the mountain tops,
each after each, till they died away in the far distance, but
not till they had reached the ears of a man who stood on
the lower ridges of the same chain of hills at about one
mile's distance eastward of the Eagle Rock.

It was no other than Ned Wheeler, who, notwithstanding
his assertion that he was about to beat the level ground
along the base of the hills, had ascended the slope at once,
and, having wandered so far as to the first terrace of the
mountain, was leaning on his rifle and listening eagerly for
some sound which should indicate to him the whereabout
of the party, which—strange to say—he held in deadly
apprehension.

A fierce smile illuminated his villanous features with a
sinister light, as he heard the often re-echoed shots, and he
muttered between his teeth, “Ah! that will do, that will do!
They have shot a deer in the Devil's Hollow! Now, they
will bear off to the left. What fools them darned gentlemen,
as they calls themselves, be! They're far enough now,
anyways; and I must hurry, or I'll sca'ce be in time.”

And with the words he threw his rifle to the trail, and,
hurrying up the mountain side, made the best of his way
toward the Eagle Rock.

Meanwhile our party also, having gralloched the hart
which they had slain, and hoisted him up into the branches of
a tail hemlock which shot out of a crevice at the foot of the
fall, set themselves to climb the rocky path by the cataract's
edge, and soon gaining the three terraces mentioned
by Dolph, took each his own line, Harry following the topmost,
which, as Pierson informed him, would lead him
direct to the often-mentioned rock, Dolph taking the next
below him, and Forester pursuing the lowest.

These terraces were in fact irregular slopes on the hill
side, comparatively level, but still descending at a considerable
angle to the southward, each bounded by a sheer
step or cliff of shaly limestone rock, varying from ten to
fifty feet in height, below which lay the next in succession.

These slopes were in some places two hundred yards in
width, in some less than fifty, but all three were covered
with a dense growth of gigantic fern, interspersed here with
swales of soft rich green grass, and there with patches of
wintergreen and cranberries, or with thickets of calmia,
rhododendron, and azalia. Overhead they were canopied
by the many-coloured foliage of the huge forest trees, and
above the topmost terrace, to Archer's left hand, as he was
wending his way eastward, the mountain rose abrupt, steep,
and stony, and clothed for the most part with a dense
growth of evergreens.

Along these terraces they made their way slowly, communicating
from time to time one with the other, so as to
keep all in accurate line, watching every brake, surveying
the bark of every gray trunk against which the wild deer
might have frayed their antlers, gathering tokens from
every turned leaf, whether the wild cattle of the hills had
passed in their direction—but in vain. No sign met their
eyes; and they had traversed half the distance to the rock,
when the sharp crack of a rifle was heard in the woods
ahead of them.

“Hist! Dolph!” cried Harry, springing to the verge of
the terrace, “where was that shot fired?”

“Within two rod of the Eagle Rock, or my ears beant
what they used to be.”

“It must be Harry Barhyte?”

“Likely.”

“Let's on. I want to speak with him.”

Onward they went then, quickening their pace a little,
and neglecting many of those precautions, which they had
previously taken to discover the game of which they were
in pursuit; for, though he said little, it was evident that there
was something on Archer's mind that day far different from
the mere killing of red deer, and that he had resolved on
some course with regard to Barhyte, whom he regarded as
the saviour of his life.

Before they reached the Eagle Rock, however, while they
were all walking each on his own line at the rate of perhaps
three miles and a half an hour, a brace of fine does bounced
suddenly out of the long fern, scarce thirty yards ahead
of Archer, and bounded across his face down the mountain

side. With the speed of light he tossed the heavy rifle to his
shoulder, shouting as he did so, “Mark deer! Dolph,
ma-ark!” and his shout was followed by the quick-succeeding
crack of both his barrels, fired one after the other.

The first doe sprang six feet into the air, and fell dead
before she had made six bounds from the brake whence she
had started, but the second had crossed the little terrace
and was springing down the crag, at that place not above
ten feet in descent, when he fired, so that he overshot her.

“Now, Dolph!” he shouted, “it's your turn; give it her,
old fellow!”

But instead of the report of the rifle, the sharp explosion
of a cap alone was heard, followed by a stifled execration,
and then,

“Hilloh! Look out, Forester.”

A shot followed, and a loud whoop from that worthy,
who had at length pinned a deer, after two day's hard
walking.

“Look here, Dolph,” cried Archer, as he looked down
upon the hunter, who was coolly recapping his gun. “I
wish you'd come up and bleed this doe for me, and then
follow me as quickly as you can; I'm afraid I shall miss
Barhyte.”

“All right, Aircher,” answered the old hunter, looking
up earnestly in the young man's face; “I'd like you to see
him. For it's fit he should know, and you'll tell him stret
and easily at oncet.”

Harry nodded gravely, and hurried on, loading his rifle
as he went; and scarcely had he done so, before the gray
rifted precipice with a table rock on the summit, and a
small glade of smooth grassy land at its base, below which
grew on the declivity of the mountain a dense grove of giant
pines, rose full in view before him.

He had never been on the spot before, yet was there no
possibility of mistaking it. For, if the scene had not spoken
for itself, there on the summit of a tall white-oak which
shot a hundred feet heavenward above the hoary rock, was
the immemorial nest of the bald-headed eagle.

Archer looked around him eagerly, as if he had hoped
to find some one at that very place, so strongly had his
imagination acted on him. But, seeing nothing like a human

form, he half smiled at his own credulity, and, bending
his eyes downward, began to search for the track of the
man he sought, on the moist soil of the little mountain
meadow.

He had not taken twenty paces, however, before he
started back, as pale as death, in ghastly horror.

For there, directly in front of the Eagle rock, flat on his
back, with his grim unshaven face, and wide staring eyes,
and a small gory spot in the centre of his forehead, all
turned heavenward, rigid and cold as the earth on which
he lay, was the man whom he sought—Harry Barhyte.

So awful and appalling was the intonation of the shout
which burst from Archer's lips at this discovery, that Forester
and Dolph Pierson were convinced, as it struck their
ears, that something fearful had occurred; and, leaving the
deer unbroken, they came rushing up at full speed, Frank
leading in the race, breathless and blown, and found their
comrade pale as the corpse itself, yet nothing all the circumstances
with the precision and self-composure of a calm
brave man.