University of Virginia Library

3. BOOK SECOND.
DAYS OF DARKNESS.

Suckling.

Marston.

Marlowe.

8. CHAPTER VIII.
THE WANDERERS.

Park Benjamin.

—Sprague.

The glad spring has come again over the land,
and nowhere do the flowers spring more joyfully
beneath her flushing footsteps than in the lovely valley
of the Mohawk. Here the seeds of civil discord
lie crushed, or, at least, inert, at present. The
storm of war has rolled off to distant borders; or if,
indeed, it be lowering near again, its terrors are unfelt,
because unseen. The husbandman has once
more driven his team afield, free from the apprehension
that he may return to find a blazing roof-tree

and slaughtered household when the close of
day shall relieve him from his toils. The wife once
more has joyed to see him go forth whistling on his
way, confident that the protector of her children
will not fall slaughtered in the ploughshare's furrow,
but return to glad her eyes at nightfall. Alas!
these simple people dream not that the present
calm is but a breathing-spell in the terrible struggle
which, ere it pass away, shall print every cliff of this
beautiful region with a legend of horror, and story
its romantic stream with deeds of fiendish crime.

Clad in the deepest mourning, the orphan heiress
of the Hawksnest sits by the trellised window, gazing
out upon the lovely fields, of which the supposed
death of her lover and relative has made her the
possessor. Her wild brother, surrendering his share
in the estate to her, has gone to seek a soldier's fortune
or a patriot's death by fighting in the armies
of his country. The green mound that covers the
remains of her last surviving parent and of her only
sister is seen through a vista of trees upon a swell
of land beyond. It is the mellow hour of twilight,
when the thoughtful heart loves best to ponder upon
such mementoes of the departed. And has Alida,
when her eye o'erbrims, and her hands are clasped
in agitation at the thought of the cruel fate which
has overtaken her household—has she no thought,
no one woman's regretful tear, for the lover who
had dared everything to shield those who were dear
to her from harm; the lover who had thrown away
his own life in the effort to snatch her from a captivity
worse than death?

She had thought of him. She now thought of
him. She had too often and too long thought of
him. At least, sometimes she herself so believed,
when accusing herself of dwelling more upon his
memory than upon that of those who ought to be

dearer to her. But, then, was there no excuse for
that which her woman's heart straightway supplied?
For her sister and father it was pleasurable, but vain,
to grieve. It was challenging the will of Heaven
ever to dwell gloomily upon their fate, which Heaven,
for good or ill, had fixed for ever. But of
Greyslaer she could think hopefully, as of one who
might still return to share her friendship and receive
her gratitude. “Her friendship!” Yes, that was
the word, if her thoughts had been syllabled to
utterance when she hoped for Greyslaer's return.
But there were moments when she hoped not thus;
moments of dark conviction that he had ceased to
be upon this earth; that death had overtaken him
as well as others for whom she was better schooled
to grieve.

That black death is a strange touchstone of the
human heart. How instantly it brings our real feelings
to the surface! How it reawakens and calls
out our stiffly accorded esteem! How it quickens
into impetuous life our reluctant tenderness, that
has been withheld from its object till it can avail no
more!

Strange inconsistency of woman's nature! Alida
mourned the dead Greyslaer as if he had been her
affianced lover; but hoped for the reappearance of
the living one as of a man who could never be more
to her than a cherished friend—a brother—a younger
brother!

Alack! young Max, couldst thou but now steal
beside that twilight window, hear those murmured
words of sorrow, and take that taper hand which is
busied in brushing away those fast-dropping tears,
thy presence at such a melting moment might bring
a deeper solace, call out a softer feeling than simple
joy at recovery of a long-lost friend. Alack! that

moments so propitious to a lover should pass away
for naught!

And where, then, is Greyslaer? The autumn
was not spent idly by his friends in exploring the
wilderness for traces of his fate; and even in midwinter
Balt has crossed the Garoga lakes on snow-shoes,
followed up the cascades of Konnedieyu, and
penetrated deep into the Sacondaga country upon
the same errand. The spot where Brant once held
his secret camp, and to which his captives were
carried, has been twice examined since Alida lent
her aid to direct Balt to the spot. But the wigwams
were long since deserted, and the snow, which
beat down and broke their flimsy frames, obliterated
every track by which the migrating Indians
could be followed. Balt again took up the search
the moment the severity of winter became relaxed.
He has now followed the spring in her graceful
mission northward; and the lakes of the Upper
Hudson, the wild recesses of the Adirondack Mountains,
that mysterious wilderness which no white
man has yet explored, is said to be the scene of his
faithful wanderings. Thither we will soon follow
him. But first, however, we must go back some
months, and take up the thread of our narrative at
the squaw camp of Thayendanagea, if we would
follow out the fortunes of Greyslaer from the moment
when the desperado Valtmeyer so fearfully
crossed his path.

The first red streaks of dawn were beginning to
dapple the east, when the luckless captive found
himself traversing a deep hemlock forest, with “The
Spreading Dew” for his guide. The Indian girl,
after reviving him from the stunning effects of the
blow which had prostrated him, by sprinkling water
upon his forehead, had bound up the contusion with
a fillet of colewort leaves, which was kept in its place

by a strip of strouding torn from her own dress;
and, urging her still bewildered patient from the
scene of his mishap, had thridded the swamp and
guided him to the hills in the rear of the Indian
camp. These hills stretch away toward the north,
increasing continually in altitude as they recede
from the Mohawk, until they finally swell into those
stupendous highlands known as the Adirondack
Mountains.

Greyslaer, though ignorant of the precise geography
of this Alpine region, had still some idea of the
vast wilderness which extended toward the Canada
border; and when he saw his guide, after reaching
a rapid and turbulent stream, turn her face to the
northward, and strike up along its banks, as if about
to follow up the water to the mountain lake in which
it probably headed, he paused, and was compelled,
for the first time, to reflect upon what use he should
make of his newly-recovered liberty, and which
way it were best for him now to direct his steps.
His first object must be, of course, to reach the
nearest body of his friends. But, since the events
in which he had been an actor, and those which
might have transpired during the weeks that he was
ill and a prisoner, he knew not where those friends
might be found. He was ignorant what changes
might have taken place in the valley of the Mohawk,
or which party might have the ascendency now that
the spirit of civil discord was fairly let loose in that
once tranquil region. Should he fall into the hands
of some straggling band of Tories, or should he even
venture to claim the hospitality of those who, but a
month since, had stood neutral while the conflict
was impending, he might find himself seized upon
by some new convert to the royal party, who would
gladly afford the most lively proofs of his newborn
zeal for the crown by securing so active a partisan

of the patriot cause. The city of Albany was,
therefore, his only safe destination, if he would preserve
that liberty of action, by the preservation of
which alone he could hope to succour Alida.

He determined, therefore, not to venture descending
into the lower country till he could strike it at
least as far east as Schenectady. But how, if he concluded
to make this long circuit through the woods,
could he find his way amid the wild forests he must
traverse? Was this lonely Indian girl, who was
little more than a child, to be his only guide? and,
if so, how were they to procure subsistence in a
journey through the wilderness, where the path was
so toilsome that many days must elapse before he
could accomplish the distance which, upon an ordinary
road, can be traversed in one? Greyslaer
abruptly broke off these unsatisfactory reflections
by asking his companion whither she was now guiding
him. The reply of “The Dew” told him that
much might be gained by admitting her into his
counsels. The foresight of the Indian maid had anticipated
at least the most serious of the difficulties
which embarrassed her companion. She was leading
him to the Garoga lakes, where her tribesmen
had once had a fishing camp, in which they might
at least find a shelter from the elements, and where
Greyslaer could readily obtain subsistence for himself
until “The Dew” could make her way to the
settlements and gain some tidings of his friends, or,
at least, procure him some more eligible guide than
herself from the lower castle of the Mohawks; a
small band of that tribe, under their leader Hendrick,
being friendly to the patriot cause. Greyslaer
hoped, however, that if he could once secure a
retreat, where, for a few days, he should be safe
from pursuit, he might find means to communicate
with his faithful and cherished follower, old Balt,

if, indeed, the stout old forester had not perished
in the fray in which he himself was taken prisoner.

These anxious reflections upon the chances of the
future served for a while to turn his thoughts from
a more bitter channel. But the recollection of the
scene in which Alida had been torn from his side
now recurred with all its horrors.

It is a hard thing to love vainly. It is a hard
thing for the young heart, that has given its first
generous burst of affection to another, to be flung
back upon itself, shocked, borne down, blasted upon
the very threshold of existence. The growth of the
sentiment in some minds—in those which love most
deeply—is often the first emotion that has ever compelled
them to look into their own souls; that has
ever made them fully aware of the sentient and
spiritual essence which they bear within this earthly
tabernacle. And to surrender that sentiment,
seems like parting with the vital spirit that animates
them. Such surrenderment of their early dreams
is, however, the fate of thousands; for love—young
love—like the Bird of Lightning in the Iroquois fable,
which bears the flame from Heaven to teach
men only where first the purifying element had
birth, seems, like the lightning, to fulfil his mission,
reckless where'er his burning wings may sweep, so
that his mysterious errand be accomplished.

But Greyslaer's was no common tale of misplaced
hopes and unrequited attachment. He could not
fling from him the image of Alida as an idle vision
of his dreaming boyhood. Her sorrows had become
his own; and the love which might have perished
from hopelessness seemed born anew from
sympathy; ay, though he were doomed hereafter to
have neither part nor lot in aught else belonging to
her, save this share in her sorrows only, yet such
community of grief was so dear to him, that the

world had now no prize for which Greyslaer would
have bartered his gloomy heritage of wo. Alas!
what a joyless and barren destiny did he thus embrace!
Flinging his fresh and blossoming youth,
like a worthless weed, away; grafting upon his ripening
manhood a shoot of bitterness, that must
dwarf its energies and wither its fruit of promise.

The shrill burst of the Indian warwhoop startled
Greyslaer from the stern revery with which we have
ventured to blind our own reflections while detailing
its general character. The wild cry seemed to
come from beneath his very feet. He recoiled a
step, and gazed eagerly down the rocky defile he
was descending. The sumach and sassafras grew
thick and heavy, imbowering the broken path below.
The Indian girl was nowhere to be seen. He
turned and threw a hurried glance along the sides
of the glen, where ledges of rock here and there
cut the foliage horizontally before him. He caught
a glimpse, as of the figure of the light-footed maiden
scaling the walls of the glen, and retreating from
him. He advanced a pace to see if it were indeed
her who was thus flying from him at his utmost
need. On the instant, a tomahawk, hurtled through
the air and cleaving the light branches near, buried
itself in a maple-tree beside him. Quick as light,
Greyslaer seized the weapon and plucked it from
the bark in which it quivered. But, instantaneous
as was the movement, it did not avail him; for, as
he was in the act of wheeling round to confront the
peril in the direction whence the hatchet came, he
was grappled in the arms of a sinewy Indian. Down
they both went together, the Indian uppermost; and
so completely did he seem to have Greyslaer at advantage,
that he leisurely addressed him while partly
raising himself to draw his knife.

“My broder thought it time to leave the camp

when Isaac come, eh, my broder? Aha!” And,
as the miscreant spoke, he made a motion across the
scull of his prostrate prisoner, as if he felt tempted
to go through the ceremony of scalping while life,
yet vigorous in his veins, should give a zest to the
cruelty.

But Greyslaer was not the man to be sportively
handled in a death encounter. His dark eye followed
the gleaming weapon, as the barbarian flourished
it above his head, with a glance as keen as
that of the hawk-eyed Indian. He had fallen with
one arm under him, and, happily, it was that which
held the tomahawk, which thus escaped the notice
of his foe. It was for the moment pinioned
to the ground, not less by the weight of his own
body than by that of the savage; and the force with
which he had been hurled to the earth so paralyzed
the strength of Greyslaer, that he did not at first attempt
to extricate his hand. But now, throwing
back his head, as if he shrunk from the knife that
was offered at it, he suddenly arched his back so as
to lift the savage and himself together; and, slipping
his arm from under him as the other bore him down
again by throwing the full weight of his person
lengthwise upon him, he dealt a side blow with the
hatchet which nearly crushed the scull of the Indian.
The fellow relaxed his grip of Greyslaer's throat
in an instant, and rolled over, and lay as if stricken
to death upon the spot, while, breathless and disordered,
young Max regained his feet.

9. CHAPTER IX.
THE MARCH OF THE CAPTIVE.

—Halleck.

Upon examining the features of the Indian, which
were of a singularly brutal cast, Greyslaer felt convinced
that he had beheld them before, but where
or when it was impossible for him to say.

Bending near to scrutinize them more closely,
he observed that life still remained; for the eyes,
which were shut, had their lids, not smoothly drooping
as when closed in death, but knit and screwed
together as when suddenly closed in a paroxysm of
rage or pain. They opened now, as a heavy gasp
broke from the bosom of the savage. Max instantly
possessed himself of the scalping-knife which lay
near, and held it, like a dagger of misericorde, at
the throat of his reviving foe. The slightest thrust
would have rid him at once of all farther difficulty;
but it was not in his heart to slaughter a living man
thus laid at his mercy, and he shouted to the girl
to bring him a withe that he might bind his prisoner.
The Dew replied not to his call. But he heard

a quick trampling near, which he mistook for her
approach.

He looked in the direction whence the sound of
footsteps came, but the leafy covert was so thick in
that direction that he could descry nothing. He listened
anxiously; they came nearer, but there was
no reply to his repeated calls. The footsteps paused
a moment. He leaned forward to peer beneath
the heavy branches; and in the same moment that
an armed Indian darted from the covert before him,
the shadow of another, who was approaching from
behind, was cast athwart him. He had not time to
spring to his feet before he was again a captive and
defenceless.

The two last-comers were soon joined by others,
who quickly made a rude litter of boughs for their
wounded tribesman, and the whole party then took
their way through the woods with their captive.
They did not, however, carry their prisoner back to
the squaw camp, as he first expected they would,
when, under the circumstances, he anticipated the
usual wretched doom of an Indian prisoner. But,
moving along leisurely until they came to a level
and marshy piece of ground, they paused for a moment,
and seemed in doubt what next to do, when
one, who had aided in carrying the wounded man,
gave his place to another, and approached to him
who seemed to act as leader of the party. He murmured
something, which, from the low tones in
which the Indians usually pitch their voices, Greyslaer
could not overhear.

“Wahss!” (go!) was the brief reply to his communication.

The man beckoned to two others, and the three,
plunging into a copse near by, appeared the next
moment, each with a birchen canoe upon his shoulders.
Crossing the trail they had been travelling,

the whole party entered a thicket of alders, where
a thread of water, scarce three inches deep, crept
noiselessly along. The others carefully parted the
bushes, so that the canoemen could let down their
shallops into this slender rill, which was so narrow
that the water was wholly hidden when a canoe
was placed upon its surface.

The wounded man was assigned to the forward
canoe, and Greyslaer, with his arms still pinioned
behind him, placed in the centre. The whole party
were then again soon in motion. The runnel was
too narrow for the use of the paddles, and for some
time they propelled themselves forward merely by
the aid of the bushes which overreached their heads.

At last they came to a spot where the swamp
around them, being confined between two hills,
poured its oozing springs more completely into a
single current. The water, running deeper and
swifter, cuts its way down through the black mould
until a channel of yellow pebbles is revealed beneath
it. The alders are separated more widely
from each other, and grow more in scattered clumps,
which sometimes form green islets, circled with a
fringe of scarlet, wherever their red roots are washed
and polished by the flowing waters.

Now the stream will sweep amid tussocks of long
waving grass, crowned here and there by a broad
branching elm, whose branches dip in the tide, that
whirls in deepening eddies where its projecting
roots overhang the water. Now it ripples for a few
yards over a pebbly bottom, and then, turned by a
spit of yellow sand—thick trodden with the tracks
of deer, of wolves, and not unfrequently with those
of bears and panthers—it slides round a point of
land black with the shade of lfoty pines. A frith of
long wild grass, growing evenly as a fresh-mowed
meadow, and embayed among the thousand points

of a tamarack swamp, receives now the spreading
river. And now, again, it is circumscribed once
more into a deep, black, formal-looking pool, circled
with water lilies; and henceforth, around many a
beetling crag, thick sheathed with laurel and the
clustering hemlock, and beneath the shadows of
many a tall mountain rising from forests of basswood
and maple, it marches proudly onward till it
expands into a magnificent lake.

Coasting along the shores of this lake for a mile
or two, they came to an Indian hunter's camp,
which, as it seemed, belonged to the man who furnished
the canoes. The place was offensive from
the smell of dead animals, such as minks, otters,
and musquashes, whose carcasses, stripped of their
skins, were suspended from the boughs of trees
around the cabin as food for the Indian dogs. But
the Indians, notwithstanding their proverbial keenness
of scent, seemed nowise molested by this savoury
atmosphere.[1]

Leaving their wounded tribesman under the care
of this worthy, who laid claim to some skill as a
medicine-man, the rest of the party started again
with their captive on the following day, and, crossing
several mountain ridges, and winding their way
among innumerable ponds and lakes, halted near a
beautiful sheet of water, which still bears the name
of Indian Lake, from its having been a sacred place
of resort to the Iroquois.

The outlet of this lake, though it is buried in a
region of lofty and steril mountains, winds through
broad savannas of deep grass, imbowered with
enormous elms, forming a soft and open sylvan
landscape, which is in the most delicious contrast
to the thick and rugged forests which frown from
the adjacent hills. This was the seat of the mysterious
Kenticoys, or solemn meetings of the Mohawks,
when, at the opening and closing year, the
different tribes of the Iroquois retired, each to some
such forest-temple, to worship the Supreme Being,
whose power was alike acknowledged by all.

The prisoner, though treated at this sacred season
with a degree of mildness and forbearance that
was new to him as a trait of Indian character, was
only allowed to approach the threshold of the valley,
where a guardian was appointed him until the
solemn days were over.

The garden-like plain was spread out below the
eminence upon which stood the shanty which was
his temporary prison-house; and Greyslaer could
from time to time discern some plumed band defiling
from the hills and losing themselves among the
far-reaching groves, to which the Indians repaired
from every side. But of the form of their ceremonial
or the nature of their worship he could discern
nothing. Nor has any white man been able to learn

more of these periodical gatherings of the Iroquois,
save only their name and their object.[2]

It was two days after these unknown rites were
consummated that Greyslaer found himself ascending
a lofty mountain under the care of his captors,
who still withheld all harsh treatment, while warily
watching him as if they only held him in trust as
the captive of some one more powerful than themselves.
It could scarcely be the wounded Isaac,
however; for, since his first seizure, Greyslaer had
been studiously kept out of the sight of that ferocious
Indian, whose bloody-minded disposition frequently
showed itself during the delirium of fever
under which he was left at the hunter's cabin.

Whatever disposition it was ultimately intended
to make of the prisoner, his life seemed in little
danger during the march; but a measure adopted
by his captors as he now reaches the highest pinnacle
of the mountain seems to indicate that its crisis
is at hand. They have led him to the edge of a
lofty precipice, which commands a view almost
completely around the compass, and motion to him
to cast his eyes above and below him.

It is the hour of autumn sunset, when the golden
air seems to glorify every object on which it
rests. Never did it bathe in molten light a lovelier
landscape of mountain peaks, interminable to
the eye; interlaced by lakes so numerous that,
as these last reflect the tints of the glowing sky,

the mountains themselves seem, in their autumn
livery, like rainbow masses floating in liquid ether.
The heart of Greyslaer thrills within him at the
sight; and not the least painful part of the death
that seems to hover near is the thought of closing
his eyes for ever upon such a world of glorious beauty.
But his struggles to prevent them from bandaging
his eyes are vain, for his hands are bound
behind him; and now he stands blinded and helpless
above the gulf into which each moment he expects
to be hurled!

Suddenly he feels a rude hand upon either shoulder,
and he gasps the prayer which he believes to
be his last—but the next moment the two Indians
who have fixed their gripe upon him only turn their
captive round several times, fast held between
them, and lead him away from the precipice. He is
then conscious of gradually descending. Again he
feels that his path leads upward over innumerable
obstacles, which his guides patiently aid him in surmounting.
Once more, again, he is convinced that
he is descending, though his pathway winds so hither
and thither that it is impossible to say how steep
the slope may be.

At last he hears the sound of water faintly dashing
upon the shore. His guides halt and remove
the bandage from his eyes. He looks up, and finds
himself upon the edge of a small lake or mountain
tarn, deep set at the bottom of a rocky bowl or hollow
less than a mile in diameter, circled around by
naked crags and splintered pinnacles of rock, some
straggling copsewood or a blasted tree here and
there alone relieving the utter barrenness of the
scene, which at once conveys the idea of the extinct
crater of a volcano.

This heart-chilling sterility is, however, somewhat
redeemed, when, after circling the lake for a

short distance, the Indians come to a few acres of
well-wooded land in a recess of the circular valley.
Here Greyslaer again hears the voices of women
and children from a camp of safety, and resigns
himself to the monotony of captivity in a stronghold
from which there seems no escape.

It were bootless to relate the varied sufferings of
Max Greyslaer during his long winter of captivity
in that dreary mountain, which the Indians call
“The Thunder's Nest:”[3] To tell how he passed
weeks of nearly utter starvation, when fortune failed
the two or three Indian hunters upon whose success
the whole community depended for subsistence:
How he eagerly caught at the relief to his monotonous
existence, when his captors ordered him also
to turn out and hunt the bear, the lynx, and the panther,
the only animals which are found among those
high mountain fastnesses in the winter season, while
the Iroquois themselves pursued on snow-shoes the
moose and red deer in the valleys below: To tell
of the harsh treatment he received, when, weary
and faint, with limbs half frozen and lacerated from
toiling through the frozen snow-crust, he returned
from a fruitless hunt; of the capricious gleams of
kindness of which he was the object when his address
and prowess in the chase awakened alike the
admiration and the jealousy of those who watched
his every motion while pursuing it with him. But
now the spring, which has been long in reaching
this highland region, has, while thickening the forest
around, brought with it the hope of escape,
amid some of those greenwood coverts. It is true
that he is no longer permitted to wander as far as
when the woods were bare. But if he can break
his thraldom for an hour, there is one at hand with

both the will and the ability to guide him from the
wilderness.

There has been an accession of numbers to the
Indian camp, bringing rumours that Brant and his
warriors have all left the lower country. And
The Spreading Dew, who came in with the rest,
has even communicated to Greyslaer that Sir John
Johnston and his loyalist retainers, both Indian and
white, have withdrawn from the Valley of the Mohawk
and fled to Canada. The patriots must be in
the ascendency! Why is Greyslaer not there to
share the triumph of his friends?

10. CHAPTER X.
THE FORESTERS.

—Bryant.

There were preparations for a hunter's carousal
in the heart of the forest. The scene of their revel
was a sunny glade, where a dozen idlers were
lounging away the noontide beneath the dappled
boughs. A fire had been kindled upon a flat rock
near by; and from the rivulet that gurgled around
its base, the neck of a black bottle protruded, where
it had been anchored to cool in the running water.
A fresh-killed buck lay as if just thrown upon the
sod in the midst of the woodland crew, who stirred
themselves from the shade as the hunter who had
flung the carcass from his strong shoulders turned
to lean his rifle against the fretted trunk of a walnut-tree
that spread its branches near.

“Why, Kit Lansingh, my boy, you are no slouch
of a woodsman to carry a yearling of such a heft as
that,” cried our old friend Balt, lifting the deer by
its antlers partly from the ground. “You must
have struck the crittur, too, a smart distance from
here, for none of us have heard the crack of your
rifle to-day.”

“Somebody may, though you have not, Uncle

Balt; for, let me tell you, boys, there's other folks
in the woods besides us chaps here.”

The hunters started up and were now all attention
—for the signs of strangers in the forest is ever a
source of keen interest to the woodsman, who, when
the frontier is in arms, never ventures to strike the
game of which he is in search without remembering
that he himself may be at that very moment the
human quarry of some more dangerous hunter that
hovers near.

“Nay, Conyer, go on cutting up the carcass. I've
left no trail to guide a Redskin to this spot,” said
the hunter, disembarrassing himself of his powder-horn
and shooting-pouch, which he hung upon a
wild plum-bush near by. “We can sit down to
dinner without any of Brant's people coming to take
pot-luck with us; for I've scouted every rod of
ground within miles of the camp. But the Redskins
are out nevertheless, I tell ye.”

“Where, Kit, where? How know you?” simultaneously
cried a dozen voices.

“Why, you see, it must be at least four hours
agone since I struck that yearling, which was down
in the Whooping Hollow by Cawaynoot Pond.”

“Cawaynoot Pond!” ejaculated a hunter. “What,
that little bog-bordered lake, with the island that
floats loose upon it like a toast in a tankard?”

“Go on, go on, Kit,” cried another. “We all
know the Whooping Hollow; but you were a bold
fellow to strike a deer there.”

“Yes, I stirred him first in the mash at this eend
of Cawaynoot, and that's a fact. But, instead of
taking the water there, he puts out westward, and
clips it right over toward the river till he brought
me in sight of the Potash Kettle.”

“Senongewah—`The Great Upturned Pot'—

the Abregynes call it,” ejaculated Balt; “I know
the mounting.”

“Well,” pursued Lansingh, “the buck doesn't
keep on toward the river, but hooks it right round
the rim of the Kettle, and back again toward the
east. It was, in course, long afore I could git a
shot; and, following hard on his trail along a hillside
overgrown with short sprangly bushes, I saw,
by the way in which they were trampled down, that
a white man must have passed that way before me.”

“A white man?” cried several voices, with increasing
interest.

“Yes, a white man; and that within no very
great time, any how.”

“How knew you that, Kit?” asked Balt.

“Why, I cleared the bushes aside, looked down,
and there, as plain as my Bible, I saw the print of
his shoe in the moss.”

“Which, in course, would not hold a foot-print
long if it was fresh and springy. Kit is right, boys,”
said Balt.

“And that wasn't all, uncle. I saw a shoe-print
in the fresh moss, with that of a small Injun moccasin
treading right in his footsteps. (A little salt,
Teunis; now let the gravy of that other slice drip on
my corn-cake till I'm ready for it—so fashion.)”

“A moccasin? Go on, go on, Kit,” cried an eager
young hunter.

“Let a man eat in whiles, won't you, lads?” said
Lansingh, who seemed disposed to make the most
of his narrative; “well, I went on, followed my deer
till I got a shot at him from behind a cranberry bush
in the Whooping Hollow, and just as he was bending
his knees to take the water near the very spot
where I first started him (it was natural, you know,
Uncle Balt, for the crittur to go back where he belonged—a
drop of that liquor, if you please), he

caught my bullet in the back of his neck, gave a
splurge, and was done for.

“So, after pulling him out of the water, I hangs
up the carcass out of reach of the wolves, and goes
back to look after the white man's trail.

“It kept along the hillside only a short distance,
and then struck suddently off atween two rocks and
among some dogbriers, where I nearly lost it, right
over the ridge; on the opposite side of which it led
right back in the direction from which I had first
traced it. Now, says I to myself, says I, it's after
all only some fool of a fellow that has lost himself
in these woods, which are about the easiest to travel
a human crittur could have, seeing that the hills are
so many landmarks all around. Let him go to the
old boy, says I, for a dunderhead as he is. No,
again says I, here's an Injun moccasin right in his
track, and perhaps it's some unfortunate who's been
driven to take to the brush by the troubles of the
times, and not come here to make a fool of himself
for pastime; so, Kit Lansingh, streak it ahead, man,
and look after your fellow-crittur.”

“I'd a disowned ye for my sister's son had ye
done otherwise,” interrupted Balt.

“Well,” pursued the hunter, “I did go ahead, and
that though it took me myself out of my way, Uncle
Balt. I followed the scent for miles toward the
east, till I thought it would take me clean out to
Lake George. But at last I saw what paid me for
my trouble; for, in crossing a bit of pine barren, I
came upon a raal Indian trail, and no mistake about
it—where a dozen men or more had streaked it
through the sand after my shoe and moccasin.”

“Tormented lightning!” cried Balt, rubbing his
hands in much excitement; “go on, go on, Kit;
d'ye say a dozen Injuns?”

“Yes, uncle, not a Copperskin less; and let me

tell you now that this discovery discomboberated
me considerably. Why, says I to myself, says I,
why should a dozen Redskins be led away thus
after one poor wanderer, when they might see already,
from the double trail, that he is a doomed
man, from the moccasin tread that is still fresh in
his footfalls; here's something new, now, to study
in Injun natur, and I'll see the eend of it. So, with
that, I ups and ons.

“And now I soon saw, by the way in which the
white man's track doubled and doubled again, crossing
and recrossing that of the Injuns in one etarnal
everlasting snarl, that the fellow could not be cutting
such carlicues for nothing. He knows what he's
about. He's a chap that understands himself, says
I; and I began to have a respect for him.

“By this time, though I ought to have said it
afore, the trail had led west again; yes, indeed, clean
across the river, which I forded in following it, and
then up and away over the ridge on the opposite
side, striking clean over the Sacondaga. I mistrusted
that it would cross that river, too, as it had down
the other branch; but no, it follows down to the
meeting of the waters, or Tiosaronda,[4] as the Abregynes
call it. There, where the falls of the main
river roar through the rocky chasm as it hurries
along like mad to join the other fork. And here,
says I, the game will either be up with Shoeties, or
he will give Moccasin the slip altogether. And
raally, boys, I defy the best woodsman among ye—
I defy the devil, or Uncle Balt himself—to find any
leavings of that white man around the place. You
may see there the woods trampled all round by
Injuns. You may see where they have slipped
down the bank, and where they've clomb up again.
You may follow their trail backward and forward

along either fork of the stream for a mile, and you
may see where they all united again, and trudged
off as if to take up the back track once more afresh,
and so make a new thing of it; but how or whither
that white man cleared himself, you cannot find
out!”

“That flogs natur!” cried a hunter. “And saw
ye no other trace of the critturs anywhere, Kit?
Not a hair's ashes of them?”

“Yes! but not thereabouts; and now, boys, I'm
about to tell you the curiosest part o' the hull business.
For you must know, that, if I had not left
my deer where I did, the snarl might have remained
without any farther clew. But as, after giving up
the chase, I made back-tracks up the river, recrossed,
and struck out again for Whooping Hollow to
bring the venison on here to camp, what should I
discover but the selfsame track of the white man
right in the heart of the hollow. I did not look to
see whether the floating island was near shore, or
if he had stepped aboard and floated off on it; but,
`my friend,' says I to him—I mean, says I to myself—`my
friend,' says I, `had I seen your first track
in the Whooping Hollow, and on the very shores of
Cawaynoot, you would never have led me sich a
Jack-a-lantern chase as this. I'm not a gentleman
that keeps company with the Striped Huntsman
or Red-heeled Rob, as the Scotch settlers call ye;
and, if we are ever to make acquaintance, your own
parlour in the Whooping Hollow is not exactly the
place I would choose for an introduction. With
that I cut out in quick order from the hollow, and
made clean tracks for camp. And that, boys, is the
hull o' my story; and now let's have something to
drink.”

The woodsmen all listened with deep attention
to this long rigmarole narrative as it was slowly de

tailed by the young hunter. By some it was received
merely as an idle tale of wonder, such as those
who love the marvellous may often hear from the
simple-minded rangers of our forest borders. It
was but one of the thousand stories told about the
Whooping Hollow, whose mysteries none could,
and few cared to solve. (For though the wild,
whooping sound, from which, in former times, the
hollow took its name, is now never heard, save in
echo to a human voice, the floating island is still
pointed out to the traveller as his road winds around
the basin at the bottom of which reposes the little
lake of Cawaynoot.[5] ) Others, again, regarded the
story of Christian's adventures as affording positive
evidence of the neighbourhood of Indians; and
though “The Striped Huntsman,” as he was called,
might be at the bottom of the business, yet it was
evident that a considerable band of mortals like
themselves had been equally, with young Lansingh,
misled by his deviltries and lured into their immediate
neighbourhood. This last was, in fact, the
view which old Balt took of the matter.

“Not,” said the honest woodsman, “that the crittur
whom folks call `The Striped Huntsman' be
ither a good sperrit or a bad sperrit, or whether or
no there be any sperrit at all about the matter!
Nother do I pretend to say, with some people, that
the Striped Huntsman is only some roguish half-breed
or outlawed Injun Medicine-man, who has
pitched upon this unsettled part of the patent between
the Scotch and German clearings and the
Mohawk hunting grounds, as the very corner of
the airth from which it was the business of no one
in partikler to oust him, whatever shines he might
cut up on his own hook. No, I leave it to the domine,

whose business it is to settle sich matters. (Pity
the good man couldn't catch some droppings o' eloquence
from yonder preaching brook to lifen his
sarmints!) But I tell ye, boys, that if it be raaly
the track of the crittur which lies fresh in our neighbourhood,
it's not such an unlikely sperrit after all;
for why may we not captivate some of the Redskins
that it has coaxed toward us, and thus, mayhap, git
tidings of the poor lost capting?”

“Oh, Balt,” said a hunter, “you are for ever
thinking of poor Capten Max, whose bones must
be long since cold.”

“And for what else, Rhynier Peterson, did we
come off on this tramp, if it was not that all of us
had some thought of the capting? And born heathens
we'd a' been had we not come to look after
him,” added Balt, indignantly.

“Yes; but, Balt,” said another, “though we all
of us followed you willingly enough at first, yet
haven't we all determined long ago that is was a
wildgoose chase you were leading us after? Here,
now, we've been fifty miles above here, poking about
among mountains so big, that, if the summer ever
manages to climb them, it is only to rest herself for
a week or so, when she slants down the other side,
and leaves the snow right off to settle in her place.
The old `North,' too, haven't we followed up the
river to where it dodges about, trying to hide its
raal head in a hundred lakes? These lakes, more-someover,
haven't we slapped through them into
five times as many more, and made portages up to
the leetlest tricklings of some of them? To be sure
we have; and what good has it done us, all this
trampoosing and paddling hither and thither in this
etarnal wilderness? We are now within ten miles
of Lake George, and less than half that distance of
the mouth of the Sacondaga, and my say is, either

to strike over at once to Fort William Henry, or to
cross the river below the forks, and make the best
of our way to Saratoga.”

“And that's my say too,” said a gray-headed
hunter who had not yet spoken. “It's a fool's errand
looking farther for the captain. I don't myself altogether
believe that young Max is completely done
for in this life; for we found traces enough of him
in the deserted squaw camp last autumn; and if the
Injuns kept him alive so long, he may yet wear his
scalp in safety. But it all comes to the same thing
if Brant has carried him off to Canada, where he'll
be sure to keep him till these wars are over.”

“What! you too, Hank Williams!” replied Balt,
with a look of keen reproach at the last speaker;
“you, who were the first to offer to take to the
woods with me, and keep there till, dead or alive,
we found the capting! Well, boys, I don't want to
git riled with ye when, mayhap, we are jist upon
the pint of a fight, where a man wants all his coolness;
but I tell ye one thing, I came out here after
young Max, and, dead or alive, I don't go in without
him. You may drop off one by one, or go away
the hull biling on ye together, ye may; but old Balt
will not leave these woods till he gits fairly upon
his trail; and, once upon it, he'll follow it up, if he
has to streak it again clean through the mountains to
Canada. So, now we understand each other, let's
eat our dinner without no more words said about the
matter, but go and look after these Injuns as soon
as may be.”

“Why, uncle,” said Christian Lansingh, as the
rest of the party now addressed themselves silently
to the rude meal before them, “I've never thought
for a moment of giving up the chase as long as you
thought it well to go ahead.”

“I know'd it, boy, I know'd it; the son of old

Christian and my nephew is not the chap to be skeered
from his promise by some nigger nurse's gammon
about the Striped Huntsman and such fooleries.”

“Oh, our friends don't stickle about the matter
we have now in hand,” said another young hunter,
modestly; “but, you know, Balt, some of them have
left their homes and—”

“Their hums? And who in all natur wants a
better hum nor this? Here are walls that rise
straight upward higher than any you see in housen,
keeping the wind away, yet letting you step about
where you choose without getting out o' doors—for
these walls follow you, as it were, and close around
you wherever you move; and as for them as wants
a fireside, why, aint the woods right full of clean
hearth-stones and cosy nestling-places? A hum?
Tormented lightning! is it a soft bed ye want there,
lads? Why, isn't yonder mossy tussock as fresh
and springy as e'er a pillow your good woman could
shake up for ye—there, I mean, where that woof of
vine-leaves, close as an Injun mat, spreads over to
keep alike the sun and dews away? Lads, lads, I'm
ashamed on ye to talk o' housen in a place like this,
where the very light from heaven looks young and
new—you may laugh, Bill, but it does, I say—the
light o' God looks bright, and fresh, and tender here,
as if it might a' been twinborn with the young Summer
this very year—see only—jist see for yourselves
how it scatters down through the green thatch
of yonder boughsm which lift each moment as if some
live and pleasant thing dropped from them on the
sod below!”

“It is of those they have left at home,” rejoined
the young hunter, the moment that Balt, pausing to
catch breath, allowed him to put in a word; “our
friends have left wives and families at home, whom
they must look after in times like these; but here's

half a dozen of us useless lads, who will keep the
woods with you until you yourself shall say that we
have made a clean thing of it.”

The doughty Balt seemed to wince a little under
the first of these remarks; for he was compelled to
admit the force of it. He did not reply, however,
save by patting the speaker on the shoulders, and
nodding to him kindly as he buried his face in the
flagon from which the whole of the company drank
in succession. The rest of the meal was despatched
in silence, and the party then made their preparations
for proceeding to the spot where Christian
Lansingh had last seen the mysterious footprints.

Leaving Balt and his crew of foresters to make a
cautious and wary reconnoisance of this enchanted
ground, let us give our attention to the two wanderers,
whom the reader may soon have cause to suspect
were the real flesh and blood actors in this
game of woodland magic.

11. CHAPTER XI.
THE FLIGHT FROM THE THUNDER'S NEST.

Brainard.

Let it bring no reproach to the manhood of Max
Greyslaer, that now, in the very prime of youthful
vigour, with a frame schooled by hardship to endurance
of every kind, he must still depend upon female
address to deliver him from bondage.

Twice already had he attempted, at the free peril
of his life, to regain his liberty; once, as we have
before seen, when, lost in the mazes of the forest,
he rushed again unawares directly into the arms
of his enemy; and again, during his abode in The
Thunder's Nest, he had, when nearly succeeding
in the attempt, been overtaken in the deep snow-drifts,
amid which he must have perished, even if
successful, and hurried back in triumph to the Indian
camp.

Then, upon this second recapture, he had undergone
all the horrors of mind which must precede a
death of Indian torture with those who have read or
heard of its cruelly ingenious and protracted agonies.
He had been subjected to all the savage
preparations for the stake, and had then confronted

death in its most awful shape. He had seen the
flames kindled around him. The fire-tipped arrows
had been shot into his body, and torments far more
excruciating were about to follow, when, as an Indian
beldame advanced to tear the only remaining
strip of vesture from his body, the totem of Brant
imprinted upon it was revealed to the hellish crew
of executioners around him, and saved him from a
death so horrible.

Since that moment, though still strictly guarded,
he had been treated with all the forbearance which
characterized the conduct of the party which had
brought him hither, though they had long since gone
off and left him in other hands. But as, though
wearing the insignia of an immediate follower of
Thayendanagea, he had never undergone the ceremony
of being formally adopted into any tribe of the
Mohawks, he was conscious that his change of treatment
arose only from his being now regarded rather
as a slave than a prisoner. He was determined
once more to seize an opportunity to escape, and to
perish rather than be retaken. He relied much,
however, it must be confessed, upon The Dew to
make such opportunity for him. Nor was that hope
and confidence misplaced.

Greyslaer, though much given to that half romantic,
half philosophic mood of wrapping one's self
up in one's own dreams and speculations, which
belongs to that inexperienced season of life when
we value our own thoughts far more than the material
objects around us, was still not deficient in
keen and curious observation of character. And for
months it had been one of his chief mental resources
to study the personal traits and peculiarities of
the singular people among whom his present lot
was cast.

He was sitting one morning a little aloof from a

group of loungers of all sexes and sizes, listening
to a rude legend which an old woman, employed in
weaving mats, was relating for their edification.
The wild tradition with which she was engaged related
to those strange subterranean sounds which
are still, from time to time, heard among these
mountains. She told of some bold hunter who went
out determining to trace the spot whence these
groanings of the earth had travelled out. And
Greyslaer, who had looked with a curious eye upon
the remarkable peculiarities of this volcanic region,
bent near to hear how the strange fancy of an Iroquois
would account for natural phenomena to whose
existence he himself could bear testimony.

At this moment the report of a gun was heard
not far off. It probably was discharged by some
hunter belonging to the camp, and excited no attention
among the listening group. Presently, however,
The Dew, who had gone down to the shore of
the lake to bring water, appeared, and saying aloud
that the hunter who had just fired needed the assistance
of the white man in bringing some game to
camp, motioned Greyslaer the direction in which he
should go, which, strangely enough, was in an opposite
direction from that whence the sound came.
The others were too much engaged with the story-teller
to notice the discrepance, whose purport, however,
was intuitively understood by the prisoner;
and, before the approaching hunter had reached the
camp on one side, he had gained a considerable distance
on the other. He pierced far into the ravine
through which the waters of the lake discharge
themselves from the hollow, and now only hesitated
which way to turn his steps. The ravine, though
at first distinctly defined, had, within a few hundred
yards of the lake, so broadened and broken up into
a thousand rocky inequalities, that it was impossible,

as the forest thickened around him, to tell what
route to take in order to descend the mountain. The
outlet of the lake would seem to have been a sufficient
guide; but this, a mere rill at its commencement,
was broken up into a hundred slender threads
of water, which, losing themselves now among matted
leaves, and now creeping beneath the mossy
woof which wraps the living rocks and the rotten
trunks wedged between them, in the same green vesture,
served only to distract the judgment that would
lean upon them as a guide. Greyslaer, in fact, had
only gained a lower and broader basin than that
which held the waters of the lake; and though it
likewise was walled round by craggy pinnacles, yet
here there was a heavy forest-growth; and these
barriers themselves, as well as the passage through
them, were wholly screened from view by the intervening
foliage.

But now, darting like a bird from the green
wood covert, The Dew suddenly presents herself
in the path before him, and beckons Greyslaer onward.
As yet there are no signs of pursuit behind;
but the moments are precious; for the descent
of the mountain abounds in difficulties, and
they have still a ravine to gain and a narrow gorge
to pass through before gaining the bottom; a gorge
so narrow that it might serve as a gateway to this
labyrinth of natural fortifications; and here a single
armed man might prevent their egress. The maiden
now doubts for a moment what path to take.
The sides of the ravine may be the safest, if they
would avoid any chance wanderers returning to the
Indian camp from the valley below. But these are
every here and there broken by tall benches of rock
too high to leap from, and doubling the toil of those
who ever and anon must climb over the loose stones
around their base. The girl, therefore, descends

still farther into the Hollow, where a sloping pavement
of smooth rock, some hundred yards in length,
seams the mountain. It looks as if it had been
once overlaid by soil and forest growth like that
around; but the stratum of matted roots and earths
has been peeled off the steep declivity, and the fountains
of a rivulet, oozing out from the compost of
leaves and fibres which still overlay the upper end
of the slope, glide with thin and noiseless flow over
the naked rock. And now, as the shallow rill deepens
into a brook, which gurgles among the loose
boulders, they follow it down as it keeps its way
through an easy swale of less broken land.

The woods upon its banks are here an open
growth of ash and maple; and Greyslaer's confidence
in the sagacity of his guide was for a moment
shaken when he saw her persist in keeping her
way along so exposed a path. He thought that they
had already gained the base of the mountain, from
the lofty and frowning cliffs of rock which now and
then he could descry afar off, lifting themselves
above the tree-tops around. He would fain have
struck off to some thickets which, through these
open glades, could be plainly seen crowning the
lower and nearer ridges of rock that traversed the
hillsides above them.

But the girl directed his attention in advance,
and, for the first time, he saw the sunshine playing
upon some spruce and cedar tree-tops that were immediately
upon a level with his line of vision. She
pointed to the brook, still their emulous companion,
and he understood at once that it must have some
sudden fall where those trees were growing. There
must be a change of soil, rocks, and thickets there;
a swamp, perhaps, and possibly one or more tributaries
to the brook ere it reached the plain below.
And, truly enough, the sound of a waterfall soon

greeted his ears. The sides of the swale became
steeper, and it narrowed at last suddenly as if the
ground had sunk. There were irregular walls of
stone on either side, with springs welling here and
there from their mossy intervals. Loose boulders
clogged up the main current of the brook, which,
foaming and fretting for a while, emerged at last from
the rocky gorge, and took up a more stately march
through the heavy forests that spread themselves
over a richer soil below.

The fugitives followed on until that guiding water
reached the Upper Hudson, where their toilsome
descent from the Thunder's Nest, but not the peril
of their flight, was ended.

The spot where they first gained the banks of
the wild and romantic river of the North was a
few miles above that beautiful pass called Teohoken
by the Indians, where the dark-rolling waters
which form the outlet of Scroon Lake sweep into the
Hudson. Here Greyslaer quickly constructed a
raft from the floating timbers which he found in profusion
in the eddies of the stream; and the two
voyagers drifted down with the current, till, reaching
the rapids at the approach of night, they are compelled
to betake themselves to an island which divides
the waters of the Hudson just above its juncture
with the Scroon, at Teohoken.

It is a strange situation for the youthful captain,
when he finds himself alone at nightfall, with that
beautiful, elfish creature, upon an island of the wilderness;
but the Indian girl, seeming to take no
thought of the peculiarity of her position, relieves
him from the embarrassment of his. She points
him to a mossy bank, where a clump of overshadowing
basswood kept off the dew; and, retiring herself
to a leafy hollow not far remote, the fatigues
they have undergone soon plunge them both in

slumber, while the virgin moon, shining down upon
an open interval between them, is their only sentinel
through the night.

The voyagers gained the western shore with the
break of dawn, and, following it down till they had
passed the rapids, seized upon and appropriated a
canoe which they found at the mouth of a little
trouting brook which comes into the Hudson a
short distance below the forks. In this they float
down the rushing stream, which, with the Indian
girl at the helm, and Greyslaer plying his active
paddle at the prow, whirls their frail bark safely
over its rocky channel. The rapid windings of the
river and the overhanging woods, which at early
day let down only here and there a burst of sunshine
on its shadowy bosom, sweep them so quickly
from alternate light to gloom, that the startled
deer who drinks from the river's brink has scarcely
time to fix his gaze ere the shifting pageant has
passed away.

They came at last within sound of the falls of
Tiosaronda, and, landing here on the western side
of the river, near the base of Senongewoh, they
circled the northern side of the hill, and struck into
the forest in a direction towards Lake George, where
Greyslaer hoped to find a military post occupied by
his countrymen.

Hitherto our bold voyagers seemed to have been
utterly free from pursuit. But now they had not
advanced far into the forest, climbing two or three
hilly ridges in succession, before Greyslaer's steps
are arrested by a startling cry, which seems to come
almost from beneath his very feet. He looks up,
and sees The Dew with one foot advanced, her
hands averted, as if motioning him back, while she
herself gazes forward, as if trying to pierce a shadowy
glen that yawned across her path. The yell

is again repeated from below, and the maid, cowering
toward the ground, makes signs to Greyslaer to
imitate her movements. Crouching as she commands,
he ventures, however, to approach with
stealthy caution to the place where she stands. The
Dew gently moves the tilting boughs of a stunted
hemlock which is rifted in the side of the cliff on
whose edge she hovers a sprinkling of light showers
upon the bald rock, and, as Max peers through
the leafy grating, which the hand of the maid has
partially removed, the cause of her agitation is at
once revealed to him.

A band of Mohawks were clustered around what
seemed to be the fresh track of a white man in the
forest. Greyslaer, from the intervening foliage,
could by no means distinguish the object at which
the Indians pointed, but the significant gestures of
the whole party left no doubt upon his mind that the
joyful discovery of an enemy's trail had caused the
wild yell which first startled him and his companion.
The Indians had apparently been pursuing their
way through the ravine in a direction nearly parallel
to that which he was traversing. The next moment,
and the whole band had disappeared from
beneath his eye; the Mohawks vanishing behind
the gray trees so suddenly and silently, that, as their
painted forms and tufted plumage disappear amid
the dark foliage, it seems as if some wild vision of
the forest has melted amid its glooms; and he almost
expects them to reappear the next moment by
his side from beneath the rugged bark of the huge
oaks around him; such as unfolded to release the
fabled Dryads of old.

The Dew waited until sufficient time had elapsed
for the Indians to gain several hundred yards, and
then, motioning to Greyslaer to tread carefully in
her footsteps, descended the steep bank a few paces

and commenced moving rapidly along the hillside.
She had not proceeded far in this direction, however,
before, coming to a spot where some huge
rocks, covered only with dogbriers, let down the
light too broadly into the forest, she turned abruptly
from the path, thridded the thorny defile, and,
crossing to the opposite side of the ridge, regained
the point from which she had recently started. The
old path was then followed back for full a mile, and
then again as suddenly left as before. Four distinct
trails were thus made to branch out at intervals
from that which Greyslaer and his guide were actually
travelling; and the maid, seeming content
with these precautions, now kept the way steadily
forward; save that, ever and anon, she would pause
for a moment in some more open glade, poise herself
upon some fallen trunk, throw a keen but furtive
glance around her, and then flit lightly as a bird
from its perch into the leafy shadows beyond.

A deep swamp received them next; and no youth
less light of foot than Greyslaer could have kept up
with the forest damsel as she glided from one half-floating
tussock to another, her feet scarce touching
the black and slippery logs, which, plunged as they
were in the slimy mould, afforded yet the firmest
stepping-place around.

A windfall upon the hillside was to be traversed
next. The uprooted trees, wrenched from their
ancient seats by the tornado's force, lay with their
twisted stems, their boughs fast locked together,
their enormous roots turned vertically to the sky,
with fragments of rock and clay matted by their
fibres, and walling one side of the pit from which
they had been upturned, while barriers of ranklygrown
briers enclosed the others. But the splintered
tree, the thorny copse, the deep pitfalls, the
palisade of gnarled roots and jagged rocks protruding

from them, offered no obstacle to the fairy footsteps
of The Dew. The little crossbill of the mountain,
the bird that best loves the “windfall,” and
whose twinkling form and brown and gray plumage
is often the only object that enlivens these ghastly
wrecks of the forest, seemed hardly more at home
among them.

A tract of level land was gained at last. It was
a pine barren, where the tree sshot upward, a hundred
feet or more, with not a leaf of underwood
around their stems, with not a shrub below them,
and scarcely a green bough appearing to break the
monotonous range of columns, save those which
formed the verdant roof which shut in this solemn
temple. The brown maid here told her white companion
to take the lead. She pointed through an almost
straight vista between the interminable trunks;
and Greyslaer, seeing his way before him, stepped
fleetly forward, his companion treading cautiously
in his footsteps upon the yielding sand.

They had nearly crossed these dangerously open
glades, when Greyslaer suddenly felt a light hand
upon his shoulder; he turned and saw the girl pointing,
with an agitated look, to an object that was advancing
toward them nearly in the direct line they
were travelling. It was an Indian just emerging
from the thickets of ash and maple that grew upon
the edge of the barren. A few moments more, and
they would have gained the same leafy covert.

The girl in an instant knew the man for a Mohawk.
She waited not to see whether he was followed
by others. It might be one of the same
band she had seen a few hours before upon the trail
of the white hunter; and, if so, all her efforts to
avoid them had but involved her friend in their toils.
But whether it were the same or another party of
her tribesmen, it mattered not; the life of Greyslaer

now depended more than ever upon her faithful
and sagacious guidance. The Indian paused
and looked backward, as if awaiting the coming up
of his party. The Dew seized the moment, and,
followed by Greyslaer, sped backward on her path.
She crossed and recrossed it repeatedly, Greyslaer
now in his turn stepping lightly and carefully in her
footprints, so as to cover, yet not wholly erase them,
while their way yet lay through the sands of the
pine barren.

They gained at last the thick greenwood, where
the deciduous trees imbowered their path, and the
elastic carpet of moss and wild flowers, and spongy
trunks o'ergrown with juniper, and tangled thickets
of mosswood and wytch-hopple, gave now the
springy footing the tired hunter loves, and now afforded
the deep covert where the hounded deer
will seek to hide.

Proceeding thus in a westward direction, the fugitives
soon found themselves again within sight of
the river, and near the very place where they had
landed in the morning. The current ran swiftly,
but they did not hesitate to ford it, and clamber a
mountainous ridge opposite. They paused upon
a lofty ledge of rock to look back, and saw their
pursuers already in the stream. They crossed the
ridge, and descended to the other side. They gained
the banks of another river not larger than the
first, but hesitated to cross; for the yell of the Indians
was echoed from the rocks above them, and
they feared to be seen while making the passage.
Whither shall they now fly? They turn and follow
down the stream, though it leads them nearly in
the direction from which the pursuit is coming; but
their only hope is in doubling thus upon their tracks.
They make the point where the two branches meet
and mingle their waters. They turn to leave the

stream they have been following, and clamber up
the sides of the glen through which it flows, and
find themselves upon a narrow isthmus, with another
stream, deeper and far more violent, roaring
around its rocky base. Greyslaer approached the
verge of the precipice, and despaired of proceeding
farther. The cliff opposite was steep as that
whereon they stood. The main stream, whose tributary
it seemed he had been last traversing, had
here cloven its way through a rocky ridge in a channel
so narrow that any of the trees around him
would span the black chasm. But he had no axe
to fell one, nor would he have dared to disturb the
echoes of the forest if one were at hand.

At this moment the shrill whoop of the Mohawks
rose fearfully behind him. They were near. He
spoke a few words to his companion, seized a pendant
vine that flourished near the spot, and flung
himself out from the face of the cliff, as if determined
to drop into the roaring current, and take his
chance for escape in its angry bosom. He cast one
glance back on the maid ere he let himself drop in
the tide below. She had not sprung forward to prevent
him, but stood with folded arms and a look of
indignant sorrow upon her brow. Was it mingled
scorn and pity that he should thus desert his preserver?
So thought Greyslaer, as, still holding his
grasp on the vine, he permitted himself to swing
back by her side. “Surely you can swim, and do
not shrink from trying that stream with me,” he
cried.

“Were my brother an otter, he could not live in
that terrible water,” replied the maiden.

The whoop was again pealed nearer and more
near; it rose, too, this time, from a dozen savage
voices. The girl wrung her hands as if in despair,
while Greyslaer folded his arms and leaned against

a tree, as if moodily resigned to his fate. Suddenly,
however, the thought of a new device inspires The
Dew. She clambers like a squirrel toward the tree-top
from which the vine depends; loosing a long
and vigorous tendril from the stem as she ascends,
she quickly passes another and a smaller one round
it, so as to attach it firmly to a projecting bough;
descends a few yards, and, grasping the vine tightly
in her hands, darts out from the wall of foliage like
a swallow from the face of a cliff, clears the chasm,
and lands safely upon a dizzy ledge opposite.

Greyslaer, who, unappalled for himself, had but
a few moments before hung suspended over the gulf
below, covers his face with his hands in the instant
the daring feat is in the act of being accomplished;
and, almost ere he can look again, the maid has recrossed
the chasm and dropped nimbly by his side.
But why do they still delay? The sound of pursuit
grows nigher, yet Max refuses to take the chance
of escape, of which his noble guide has so daringly
set him the example, until she herself is in a place
of safety. The breath of an instant is precious—
and now The Dew again makes the airy passage, and
is followed by her friend the instant he can recover
the vine as it swings back within his reach. The
Dew, with Indian precaution, seizes it once more
as he is thoughtlessly about releasing it from his
grasp, and, winding the end around a heavy stone,
she hands it to Max, and signifies to him to throw
it into a thicket upon the same side of the stream
whereon it grew. The two have then barely time
to plunge into the bushes beyond them, when the
pursuing Mohawks appear upon the headland opposite,
and they soon after hear their baffled howl of
disappointment at the broken and lost trail of the
fugitives.

12. CHAPTER XII.
A NIGHT IN THE WHOOPING HOLLOW.

Song of Marion's Men.

Simms.

The Whooping Hollow lay now directly in their
route to Fort George, and thither the footsteps of
the fugitives were directed. The Dew was faint
from hunger, and the weary spirits of Greyslaer
were anything but cheered by the desolate scene of
that swampy-shored lake, with here and there a
dead tree waving the long moss from its gray arms
as it stood solitary amid the half-floating bog. All
concern for himself, however, was forgotten in distressing
anxiety for his companion.

They had still eight or ten miles to travel to reach
Fort William Henry, and the day was nearly spent.
But now a new source of interest presents itself to
stimulate his nerves. He hears a distant volley of
firearms, followed by a broken but rapid discharge,
as of a running fight beyond the hills. It nears
him, and he fancies he can hear the rallying shout
of white combatants mingling hoarsely with the
shrill yell of Indian onslaught. Unarmed as he is,
Greyslaer bounds forward, as if to aid those of his
own blood, who, it would seem, are borne down in

the battle. He turns to give one look to his companion.
The languid eyes of the Iroquois girl kindle
with new life as she motions to him to leave
her to her fate and rush forward.

But now, again, another volley, another shout,
and then the Indian whoop grows fainter and fainter,
as of men scattered and fleeing in pursuit. He listens
intently, but the sounds of the battle have died
away in the distance.

The twilight has come, the night closes in, and
again the moon marches up the heavens to cheer
the wanderers, if, indeed, her ghastly light, shining
down among those haggard trees, and gleaming upon
the pool that has settled in that dreary hollow, have
aught of cheering in it. The gentle-souled Greyslaer
looks often into the deep and languid eyes of
the suffering and innocent-hearted girl who has
dared and endured so much for him. He blames
himself for having permitted her to encounter the
perils they have undergone; not the least of which,
that of starvation in the wilderness, they are now
beginning to realize. The fort, it is true, is not
far; but will The Dew have strength to reach it on
the morrow?

He has made her a couch of fern and leaves,
where the cradling roots of an ancient birch supply
her mossy pillow; and now she shrinks not from
his ministering care as he sits near, watching till
her eyes be closed in slumber. But hark! there
are other human sounds in the forest besides the cry
of the whooping savage or the distant din of border
conflict. Can it be a crew of merry-makers, or is
it only the echoes of the place which wake in chorus
to the song now trolled along the hillside:

“Hist! hallo there, white man! where the devil
do you come from?” cried the foremost of the forest
choir, advancing from under the boughs into the
moonlight, and levelling his rifle upon Greyslaer as
he spoke. “King or Congress! Speak up, my
good fellow, if you've got a tongue.”

“De Roos!”

“Whose voice is that? Good God! Max Greyslaer,
is it your living self that I hold in my arms?”
And the impetuous brother of Alida—for it was no
other than Derrick himself—drew back from the
embrace of Greyslaer, into which he had thrown
himself, to look earnestly into the wan features of
his long-lost friend. Their aspect of suffering filled
him with emotions which he could only conceal in
part, as, turning round, he shouted to his comrades,

“Balt, Lansingh, Miller, carry on, men, carry on.
Here are more wonders in the woods to-night than
those we've yet dreamed of.”

But Balt had heard the first joyful cry of recognition
between the friends, and was already hugging
Greyslaer in his arms with an unceremonious
vigour, that sensibly reminded Greyslaer of De
Roos's unfortunate speech, assimilating him to a
bear, which had once given such deep offence to the
worthy woodsman. The salutations of the other
hunters, though, of course, less familiar, were hardly
less hearty, as Balt stood by and proudly encouraged
them to come up and take the hand of his old
pupil.

“Didn't I tell ye, boys,” said he, “that young
Max would come to hand the right side up? Alive?
eh! only look at the young springald. Thin and
raw-boned as he is, there's life enough in him to
squeeze it out of any of us. Law sorts, Capting
Max, how your shoulders have spread; and your
face, too, is as brown as Kit Lansingh's here. Kit,

you land-lougher, stand up and measure heights
with the capting.”

But Greyslaer had turned away, and was bending
with anxious solicitude over a figure that had
hitherto escaped the notice of his friends. “Some
water, Balt; quickly, in the name of Heaven, quickly,
old man. She faints, she faints,” said Greyslaer,
in tones of almost agonizing solicitude, as he
supported the sinking head of The Dew upon his
bosom. “Ah! they'll be an age in returning from
the lake. Your canteen, De Roos; a drop from
that may yet revive her.”

De Roos tore the canteen from his side; and, as
Max applied the cordial to her lips, the maid opened
her eyes.

“Have you no refreshment—a single biscuit in
your pouch?” asked Greyslaer.

“Here's a corn-cake, captain,” said a hunter,
handing a fragment of the coarse bread to Greyslaer.

“Yes, and we can soon get you up plenty of venison,”
cried Lansingh, who now returned from the
lake-side with the water, for which two or three of
his comrades had simultaneously rushed together.

“Off, then, with you at once, Kit,” rejoined Balt,
who now came puffing and blowing up the hill.
“We must needs camp here, I take it; for the gal's
state won't allow her removal to-night. Who'd a'
guessed, though, of finding a petticoat here with
the capting?”

“Carry on, boys, carry on, then; get up your shanties
as soon as may be,” said De Roos, while those
of the hunters who had not gone off with Lansingh
after the remains of the deer upon which they had
already feasted, bestirred themselves on every side.
Some cut stakes and rafters for the frame of the
wigwam; some peeled the heavy bark from ancient

hemlocks, which, though prostrate upon the ground,
had not yet mouldered; spreading the broad pieces
over the roof and adown the sides; while others
strewed the floor of the shanty with the fragrant
branches shorn from the living tree, after felling it
for the purpose of being thus stripped. Some busied
themselves in kindling a fire before the opening
of this sylvan shed, while the forest resounded with
the stroke of the axe, as others felled the hard-wood
trees, chopped them up, and piled them near to feed
the growing flame when wanted.

Greyslaer, in the mean time, now that his anxiety
about “The Dew” was relieved, summarily detailed
his principal adventures, speaking always of
the disinterested and heroic Indian girl in terms
that would have deepened even the colour of her
red cheek could she have understood the language
in which they were uttered. De Roos, in return,
gave him information of both a public and private
nature which claimed his deepest interest.

“But tell me, De Roos,” cried Greyslaer, “how
came you in these woods with old Balt?”

“With old Balt? Why, an hour since, I believed
truly that he was a hundred miles from here, as I
did that you, dear Max, were enjoying the hospitality
of our refugee friends in Canada. Balt must tell
you himself how he came here; for I deferred hearing
his story till we gained his camp, whither he was
conducting me when I fell in with you.”

“But yourself; how came you here yourself?”

“Oh, why, you know, we are only a few miles
from the fort; so it's no great wonder that I should
be here. Van Schaick sent me yesterday to look
after some batteaux at Glen's Falls, which are sent
up from below for the transportation of the baggage
of the command which, you know, has been relieved.”

“I know? How should I know anything about
the matter, or imagine, even, that you were at Fort
George, or who, indeed, was its commandant?”

“True, ay, true; I forgot how you have been
cooped up in these stirring times. Well, you see,
as I was about to mention, an incidental part of
my duty led me back to the lake by this route,
which is only a few miles longer to the fort. Gansevoort,
our lieutenant-colonel, got some information
from Albany a day or two since about that cutthroat
Tory, Joe Bettys, who—”

“Joe Bettys, the cutthroat Tory!” cried Greyslaer,
echoing his words in astonishment. “What,
not Ensign Joe Bettys, who was so ardent a Whig,
albeit a boon companion and crony of the Tory
Bradshawe?”

“The same man, Max; and a brave Whig, too,
he proved himself under Arnold in Canada. But,
either from some disgust with our officers, or an
original want of principle, he has been won over to
the other side, and commenced his Tory career in
a dashing style, that must make him long remembered
in these parts. He is said to have taken up
his quarters here in the Whooping Hollow, and,
assuming the disguise of a mongrel mountebank,
an outcast Indian vagrant, whom he killed, he has
practised so successfully upon the superstitious
fears of the people below, that they would make no
effort to follow and seize him upon his retreating
here after some deed of blood or plunder. So I
took an Indian guide, and came poking through here
to see if I could beat up his quarters in passing, or,
at least, light upon his trail.”

“And you fell in with Balt—”

“Just in time to lend a volley which saved him
from a devil of a licking; for he and his handful of
hunters were mad enough to engage with a score

of Mohawks, led on, as I suspect, by Isaac Brant,
or Au-neh-yesh, as he calls himself.”

“Isaac Brant? Why, I have already told you
that I left him upon the shores of a lake far west of
this, a dying man, as I thought, and—”

“Ay, but that was some six months' since, if I understood
you rightly; and I assure you he is bloody
Isaac Redivivus now. Everybody has nine lives
in these times. Isaac I know at least to be alive
and kicking; for, with Kasselman Empie and other
scoundrelly Tories who fight under the disguise of
Indians, he makes as much noise in this neighbourhood
as his father, with fifty times the number of
men, is creating along the Unadilla region. There
is, though, a touch of humanity about old Joseph
that his son is wholly innocent off.”

“And you think, then, that Isaac's tribesmen, who
were in pursuit of me, guided him hither to-night?”

“Even so.”

“But the friendly Indian who was your pioneer
to the Hollow, I don't see him here.”

“He loitered behind, where I left my corporal to
bury some two or three brave fellows whom I have
lost by this night's business. By-the-way, it is our
old boyish friend Teondetha. The Tryon county
committee sent him as a runner to Albany, whence
he was despatched with the message to the fort, requiring
the presence of our regiment to overawe the
Tories on the Mohawk. But here comes Miller
and his men. You put those brave boys to bed
safely, Miller?”

“Safely and snugly, captain; neither wolves nor
Indians will trouble them, I reckon,” replied the corporal,
touching his hat.

“Where's the Oneida?”

“He cleared out as soon as he had taken the hair
of the Redskins that fell on the other side. I mistrust

he has followed on to see if he couldn't add another
scalp to his string.”

“It's the natur of all of them,” ejaculated Balt;
“dog eating dog. He must have had good picking,
too, among the dead varmint, Adam; for there they
lay on the grass, six big buck Injuns, likely fellows
all, besides a withered chap that I clipped
over with my hatchet, and left to curl up and die.”

“And the boy,” said De Roos, without heeding
Balt's words, in a slight tone of anxiety; “you saw
nothing of the boy, Adam?”

“Nothing, captain! The brat was missing from
the moment we came in sight of the enemy. Isaac's
people must have swooped him up in a moment;
and he doubtless was glad enough to go with them.”

“What boy is that you speak of?” asked Greyslaer,
with some anxiety.

“Nobody—nothing—only a half-breed brat that
we picked up on our march. Near the falls, wasn't
it, Miller?”

“Yes, captain, in the shanty at the batteaux landing
which you visited when we went down afore,
you know. That time, I mean, when you had high
words with the old woman, because you said you
knew better when she declared that the child ought
rightfully to belong to Isaac Brant, whose son he
was, and when—”

“Silence, sir,” commanded De Roos, who seemed
both irritated and annoyed by the loquacity of
his non-commissioned officer. “There was no
child there at the time, you know well, Miller.”

“Certing! there was not, capting; but you know
you asked when next he would be there, or his
mother, I forget which.”

“Well, well, it's no matter what you forget, so
you don't forget your duty, which no one can accuse
you of, my brave fellow. And now let your

men build another fire for themselves, for here come
the hunters with something to make a broil of.”

Greyslaer, in the mean time, had listened to this
dialogue with an interest much beyond that of ordinary
curiosity. The early dissipation of Mad
Dirk de Roos, as his friend was universally called
when they were college mates together, was not
unknown to him; for, though younger than Derrick,
yet, being of a graver and more earnest character,
he had often taken upon himself the duty of an
older person in lecturing his hair-brained chum.
He recollected well that, during one of their vacation
visits to the Hawksnest, the scandal of the
country people had associated De Roos's name with
that of a beautiful squaw, whom those connected
with the Indian office at Guy Park said was betrothed
to Isaac Brant. He remembered, too, that,
one Christmas morning, Guy Johnson rode over to
the Hawksnest with a magistrate, who was at the
Park enjoying the hospitality of the season, and
closeted themselves with his guardian, De Roos's
father, upon business which, though deemed by the
family to be of a political nature, had filled him with
anxiety for his friend, who was absent at the time.
And more facts and reminiscences equally linked
together, and having the bearing of strong circumstantial
evidence upon this delicate matter, might
have suggested themselves to Greyslaer's mind, had
he not suddenly been startled from his painful musings
by a wild cry of joy from The Dew as Teondetha
suddenly presented himself in the light of the
fire before her.

The maid recoiled abashed and agitated the instant
she had uttered this natural outbreak of her
feelings, while Teondetha, who, with noiseless step,
had approached to light his calumet by the fire,
started erect from his stooping posture, and gazed

with eagle glance around. But the girl had sunk
back upon the pile of brush upon which she was reclining
in one corner of the shanty, and the tall spire of
flame which shot up between them prevented her for
a moment from being seen by her lover. De Roos,
in high spirits, as usual, was busy superintending
the preparations for supper at the different fires,
and joking with the men grouped around them as
he restlessly moved to and fro from one to the other.
Greyslaer alone had his eye upon the Indian pair,
and, as he now fully understood their language, he
was not a little amused with the cool generalship
with which the Oneida made his advances.

“My sister,” said Teondetha, seating himself on
a log near the opening of the shanty, the moment
he discovered the vicinity of his lady-love; “how
is it with her?”

“As with the bird that has been driven from its
nest, and knows not where to alight. As with the
sunbeam that drops into the forest, and finds no sister
ray to receive and mingle with her beneath its
chilling leaves.”

“Teondetha is the tree whereon the bird would
alight.[6] His bosom is the fountain that would send
back a ray to mingle with the sunbeam. Teondetha
is a great warrior. He must build a lodge of
his own, wherein to hang up the scalps of his enemies.
Who will be there to light the pipe of the
young chief?”

The girl, so far from shrinking at sight of the
gory trophies at his belt, gazed now admiringly upon
them as her half-savage lover held them up to her
eyes.

“The young chief has earned a right to smoke
before the women,” she said. “The Dew will not
extinguish his pipe when he lights it.”

“Good!” said the copper-coloured gallant; and,
bending over the coals, he carelessly swept up one
with his hand, and dropped it into the bowl of his
pipe. He puffed away calmly for a few moments,
while his thoughts seemed occupied only in watching
the smoke-wreaths that circled around him.

“What sees my brother in the smoke?” asked
the girl, after watching her taciturn wooer for a
while.

“A bird,” replied the Indian, gravely.

The girl smiled, was silent for a moment, and
then looking down rather demurely, and pulling to
pieces the twigs whereon she sat, asked,

“What says the bird to my brother?”

“It says that Teondetha is a tree whose leaves
will only flourish by The Spreading Dew.”

The girl laughed outright (girls will laugh!), but
the solemn composure of her companion seemed
nowise disturbed by her merriment. The laugh,
however, ceased at once, without subsiding into a
titter.

“And what does my brother see now?” she resumed,
so soon as she had recovered her sobriety.

“He sees a beaver.”

“And what says the beaver?”

“The beaver reminds him of a promise which
The Dew made many moons ago, off by the yellow
waters that flow from Garoga Lake. The beaver
says that those of his tribe who have no lodge become
worthless castaways. `Teondetha,' says the
beaver, `let not The Dew go out of your sight again
till you have built one for both of you.”'

“The beaver is never foolish,” murmured the
girl.

A heavy puff of smoke from the fire at that moment
wrapped the lovers from Greyslaer's sight, and
he could not see whether the Indian pair sealed this

important passage of their courtship with the impress
that fairer wooers would perhaps have used;
but, as the smoke cleared away, he thought that he
distinguished The Dew withdrawing her little hand
from that of Teondetha, who had slightly changed
his position.

“Carry on, carry on,” cried De Roos, at this moment,
inviting all parties to supper in his favourite
phrase, which, like the “push along, keep moving,”
of English farce, or the “go ahead” of modern
American slang, served him alike upon all occasions,
and was equally in requisition whether at
feast or fray.

Greyslaer, who had eaten nothing, as yet, save a
biscuit which he got from the knapsack of a slain
soldier, upon which he had been seated near the fire,
was sufficiently sharp-set to fall to with a keen relish
of the fare now placed before him.

“There's the cup by your side, capting, if it's that
ye're looking for. Lean over, now, with your cracker
here, till I put this slice of venison upon it. It's
done to a crisis, I tell ye; brown on the outside,
and juicy red within. The crittur himself would
be tempted to taste one of his own cutlets, if he
were of a flesh-faring natur. There, now, add the
salt and pepper fixings, and the king himself hasn't
a slicker supper. Never mind the squaw, never
mind the squaw, capting; Scalpy yonder will look
after her.” And running on thus while he acted as
cook, butler, and waiter for Greyslaer, old Balt,
ever on the alert to serve him, eyed his pupil at intervals
with an affectionate interest, as if it cheered
his very heart to see the half-famished wanderer
relishing this rude entertainment.

“Ah, capting,” he resumed, “but Miss Alida will
be glad to see you. We've had some rare doings
in the valley since you were missed from among us.

Sir John, as you mayhap know, broke his parole
and cleared out for Canada, after being stolen off
by old Joseph, who cut his way at midnight through
the streets of Johnstown in taking him from the
Hall. Folks talk hard of the baronet for leaving as
he did; but Balt could have told them something
which would prove he was not so much to blame.
He thought he wasn't safe, he did, after the killing
of Mr. Fenton during the armistice between the
Whigs and Tories. But Mr. Fenton, you know,
sought his own death; and, sorry as I was for it,
how could I help smashing him as I did? You
don't think I could, capting?”

“It was a bad business, Balt; but, according to
the account which Captain De Roos gave me tonight,
you were certainly not to blame.”

“I mistrust I wasn't—I raaly hope not; but Mr.
Fenton was a fine man, a likely man, capting, and it
was some comfort to me to give him Christian burial.
I sent home his watch, and what little money
he had about him, to his family; and the two or three
papers I found in his pocket I kept till you should
come back to tell me what to do about them. What
else could I? I never had book-larnin enough to
read written hand, and I didn't know but what the
papers might hold political matters of some valu to
our friends; yet I was afeard to give them to strangers
to read, lest there might be private things in
them about Mr. Fenton's folks that the family would
not like to have go abroad.”

“Where are the papers now?” asked Greyslaer.

“Miss Alida sealed them up for me, and put them
away in the old brass beaufet at the Hawksnest;
but she looked, oh! so sad when I told her that they
must stay there till you came hum, that I was sorry
I had not still continued to carry them about in my
shooting-pouch with me. But how did I know but

that I should leave my pouch and scalp both among
these wild hills?”

“You did most rightly, Balt,” said Greyslaer,
not untouched by these proofs of the just sense of
propriety which seemed to govern the simple woodsman.
“But see, that tired girl has already dropped
her head upon her arm, as if sleep had overtaken
her. Let us withdraw from the neighbourhood of
the shanty to the other fire, and see what disposition
of us Captain De Roos proposes for the night.”

“Yes, and there's the Oneida stretched like a
hound upon the edge of the ashes, so that no one
can enter the shanty without stepping over him. It
is but judgmatical for us to look for a snoozing-place
elsewhere.”

De Roos, however, when they joined his party a
few yards off, seemed to have no idea of any one's
seeking their rest so soon. He had just relieved
the sentinels who had been posted here and there
in the woods around, and the rest of his half-disciplined
followers were ready enough to unite with
Balt's hunters in the chorus, as the mad captain
again broke out in the song with which he had first
waked the echoes of the forest round about, and
which he had originally learned from old Balt himself.
Greyslaer, however, borrowing a blanket from
one of the soldiers, was permitted to forego a part
in this midnight saturnalia of the forest; for his plea
of excessive weariness was admitted when De Roos
remembered that they must reach Fort George early
on the morrow, if they would have a place in the
column when his regiment took up their line of
march. The wayworn heir of the Hawksnest was
soon plunged in deep slumber; but the words of
the following song ever and anon mingled in his
dreams, as the woodland revellers bore down merrily
in the chorus.

SONG OF BALT THE HUNTER.

13. CHAPTER XIII.
ESTRANGEMENT.

—Dawes.

—Mrs. Embury.

Glad rumours of the success which had finally
crowned the hunter Balt in his wild-wood quest
preceded the arrival of the popular young Max
among his old friends and neighbours. It were difficult
to define the emotions of Alida when the
news of his deliverance from captivity and death
first reached her ears. For, though joy and delight
for Greyslaer's escape first swallowed up all other
feelings, yet painful reflections succeeded, and
doubts and fears crept into her mind, to alloy this
generous burst of heartfelt sensibility.

She felt, she owned to herself, that, despite the
difference of years (and most slight was that disparity),
she could have loved her youthful worshipper.
But this thought had only been admitted into
her heart when she believed the barrier of the grave
was closed between them. How was it now with
her when Greyslaer lived? lived, while a barrier
more hideous even than that of the grave must keep
them apart for ever! But why dwell now upon
her past relations with Greyslaer? Why imbitter

her hours by musing upon their possible future position
toward each other?

Long months had intervened since the passionate
declaration of her almost boyish lover. There was
time enough even for him to have forgotten his
youthful fancy, or exchanged it for another, if some
fair face had presented itself to him when away
from her. Besides, had she not revealed that to
him which must crush all hope upon the instant?
Surely he could not have gone on feeding with vain
dreams of what might be his misplaced and most
unfortunate attachment—had he not consumed a
captive's long and lonely hours in such fruitless and
imbittered musings upon his baffled affections? His
sorrows must have been those only of a young and
ardent mind, that grieves to find itself cut off, in the
season of its vigour, from the paths of ambition
which men so love to tread; his dreams, only those
which will crowd into a mind fertile as his when
planning his escape from present evil—a prisoner's
dreams of home and friends, of free will and unrestricted
motion, and the bright world which, fresh
as ever, was to be enjoyed again.

Alida hoped that it might be so; yet, somehow,
she grew sad even in so hoping! A sensible and
modest mind is not merely flattered, but substantially
raised in its own estimation by the sincere and
unaffected attachment of another as well constituted
as itself, even when it cannot return the passion.
And though it can hardly, with precision, be said to
either grieve or humble us when that regard passes
away, yet there is something of sorrow, something
of humiliation, when we become assured of its decay.

In the mean time the presumed heiress of the
Hawksnest had not wanted for admirers, though
the natural imperiousness of her disposition prepared

a haughty rebuff for more than one who made
haste to address the beautiful orphan, even in her
first secluded months of mourning. The advances
of some of these suiters were well known in the
neighbourhood, and their supposed rejection, when
they successively withdrew from the field, became
very naturally the talk of the country people, who,
when Greyslaer's return from captivity was bruited
abroad, unanimously agreed that Fate had intended
that he should be the happy man. “Surely,” they
argued, “young Max would never take possession
of the estate which Miss Alida had so long enjoyed
as his nearest kinswoman, and the co-heir of Mad
Derrick, without offering first to make her his wife?
And where was the girl in the valley that would
refuse him? Proud and uppish as she was, old
De Roos, though a respectable man enough, and
the old friend of Sir William, was no such great
shakes, after all, that his daughter might turn up
her nose upon the only son of Colonel Greyslaer
that was.”

As for Max himself, it was agreed, without any
dissent, that he would seek a wife forthwith. He
was the last of his name; and, though sternly republican
in his political principles, democracy entered
not into his ideas of the social relations, and he was
believed to inherit from his stately old father sufficient
pride of family not to wish the name of Greyslaer
to expire with himself.

Max, in the mean while, wholly unconscious that
he and his affairs were furnishing the only subject
of gossip to the good wives of the neighbourhood,
now that the storm of war had rolled away from the
valley for a season, and left leisure for such harmless
themes, disappointed every one by the quietude
of his proceedings. A lawyer from the county
town calling upon Miss De Roos, informed her

that Captain Greyslaer, being about to join his regiment,
which belonged to a brigade of volunteers that
had recently been draughted into the service of Congress,
he had no idea of taking possession of the
Hawksnest, and that Miss De Roos would add to
the obligations which Captain Greyslaer already
felt himself under to her late lamented father, if she
would continue to preside over an establishment
which must otherwise be broken up, and perhaps
fall to ruins; for the aged housekeeper was now too
infirm for the charge, and Captain Greyslaer was at
a loss what disposition to make of his other servants
in times so disturbed. “The captain,” said the
lawyer, looking round upon the ancient furniture,
“seems to have his heart bent upon keeping these
old sticks together, and there is no one but you,
madam, to whom he can look, as one feeling the
same sort of interest in the place as that which he
cherishes.”

The latter part of his agent's statement was enforced
by a note from Greyslaer, containing an eloquent
appeal to her on the score of their mutual
childish associations, and the impracticability of his
making any humane disposition of his black servants;
for manumitting them—a resource which had
suggested itself—would, in the existing state of the
country, be, in fact, the cruellest thing he could do,
there being now no employment for labourers of
that class.

Alida, who had not been left unprovided for by
her father, and was, therefore, not thus rendered
dependant upon the bounty of a distant kinsman,
who stood toward her in the delicate relation of a
discarded lover, scarcely hesitated in her determination.
She would remain beside the graves of her
father and sister, and consider herself as mistress
of the Hawksnest until Captain Greyslaer was prepared

to enter into his possessions; but it must be
as a tenant upon the same terms that her father had
held the property.

A month or more had elapsed after the adjustment
of this delicate matter, and Greyslaer, writing
weekly to her from Albany and New-York, whither
his professional duty had led him, managed always
in his letters to preserve a tone of easy friendliness,
such as had prevailed between them in the younger
days of their intercourse. This composure upon
paper, however, vanished entirely when at last they
met. The frank cordiality which Greyslaer assumed
was rather overdoing nature, as Alida thought
when she observed his rapid utterance and restless
motions; and Greyslaer was conscious that Alida
trembled with agitation when he smilingly proffered
the ordinary salute which fashion so inconsistently
permitted among the polite, considering the otherwise
ceremonious manners of that formal day.
They each seemed labouring under a continual exertion
to maintain the tone in which Greyslaer had
so happily commenced their correspondence, and
which had hitherto been successfully kept up between
them. But the restraint which either felt at
heart must soon have convinced them that they
mutually stood in a false position toward each other.

A famous modern sayer of apothegms tells us
that friendship may sometimes warm into love, but
love can subside into friendship never; and an ancient
one goes still farther by making hatred the
only change of which love is capable. As indifference
will often supervene to the most violent passion,
the creed of the last is manifestly absurd; but
there is something of truth in the proverb of the former;
for though the sentiment of friendship, a feeling
of the warmest and kindest regard, may indeed
exist where love has once been, yet the calm relation

of friends, with all its easy and pleasurable
frankness of intercourse, can hardly grow up between
two parties where love has once been the
source of interest to either, and that love has been
once avowed. There must be some lurking mortification,
if not some secret trace of sorrow, on one side
or the other; a jealousy of mutual respect, a quickness
to take offence, and, above all, the mournful
memory of former passages, endeared only in recollection,
perhaps, by their being associated with the
halcyon season of youth and hope, but still endeared
to it; there must be this memory to come over
the spirit amid its gayest sallies, and make the society
of the one who has elicited them, saddening,
if not oppressive, to the mind for the moment.

What wonder, then, if Greyslaer's visits to the
Hawksnest were gradually intermitted. A character
so earnest as his cannot always find material
for conversation amid themes of passing interest,
while one that fills his whole soul is utterly forbidden;
for conversation with her, moreover, whose
presence unlocks the secret chambers of his mind,
and peoples it with thoughts that may not walk
abroad.

He had promised Alida never officiously to thrust
himself farther into her confidence; and he remembered
his promise, but the forced durance she had
suffered at the hands of Bradshawe was known to
him, and he burned to resolve his suspicions concerning
that dark and desperate man. He had
hoped, in his earlier visits, that their discourse might
some time lead to Alida's reposing that full confidence
in him which he persuaded himself was somehow
due to the truthfulness and steadfastness of his
attachment, under the changed form in which he
was determined she should view it. But the moment
did not come; and upon each succeeding visit

Greyslaer seemed farther from the hope of such a
revelation than ever. Alida, in fact, did not dream
of making it.

Whether it was that she did not consider Greyslaer
her young friend the most proper party to interest
himself about her affairs; whether she paled at
the peril to which Greyslaer her lover would be exposed
by the steps he might adopt upon receiving
the disclosure; whether she shrunk, with true female
delicacy, from the farther agitation of a subject
so painful, or whether she had proudly determined
to be herself the arbiter of her own destiny, it is impossible
to say. But while there are some circumstances
which diminish the force of the last supposition—such
as the present banishment of Bradshawe
from this region, and the change which
seems to have come over the character of Alida
after she came to realize the full extent of her family
bereavements—it is probable that all these considerations
swayed her by turns, and suggested the
reserve of conduct which was the result.

And now Captain Greyslaer has become noted
alike among his equals in rank and his superior officers
for his rigid and exclusive attention to his military
duties. He seldom goes beyond the limits of
the post where he is stationed. His visits to the
Hawksnest, which is only a few miles off, seem
gradually to have ceased altogether; and a book or
newspaper from New-York, with some pencilled remarks
upon the news it contains from the seat of
war, is, when transmitted through his orderly, the
only intercourse he holds with its inmates.

Alida—though other officers of the garrison
sought by assiduous attention to supply the place of
Greyslaer—Alida, it must be confessed, began soon
to miss his accustomed visits. The superior mental
accomplishments of Greyslaer, the student would

with her have given him but slight advantage over
his military comrades; but the character of Greyslaer
the soldier, of Greyslaer the young partisan,
whose wild adventures and perilous escapes among
the Indians was the theme of every tongue, appealed
more forcibly to the romantic admiration of Alida;
and, apart from all tender associations of the
past, regarding him only in the light of an acquaintance
of the day, she would have felt an interest in
the society of Max that no other of his sex whom
she had hitherto known could inspire.

There might possibly, too, be something in the
altered aspect of Greyslaer which more or less affected
the light in which a woman's eye would regard
him, now that his cheek had lost its freshness
from hardship and exposure; and that almost boyish
air which characterized his appearance even in
early manhood, had been changed by more recent
habits of action, of command, and of self-reliance.

The mother who, welcoming her long-absent son,
sighs as she looks vainly in his features for those
gentler traits which graced the handsome stripling
with whom she parted, smiles the next moment with
inward pride at the sentiment of newly-awakened respect
with which she is somehow mysteriously inspired
toward her own offspring: she startles at the
altered modulations of his voice as heard at a distance:
she wonders at the changed cadence of his
footfalls, as his approaching step, which was ever
music to her ear, grows nearer: she marks his graver
and more even mien: she gazes upon the brow
where manhood has already stamped its lordly impress;
yet, even while leaning for counsel upon him
who so lately looked to her for care, can scarcely
realize the swift and silent change that is now so
fully wrought.

So had it been with Alida. Greyslaer was to her

as a boy no more; and if her own feelings had not
taught her thus, the conviction must have been forced
upon her by the light in which, as she saw, he
was regarded by those far older than herself. His
opinions upon all subjects seemed to be quoted by
those who were his immediate associates; and she
heard continually of grave cases in which Greyslaer's
judgment was appealed to by members of the
Committee of Safety, and others charged with the
various clashing powers of the provisionary government
of the period. The friendship of such a man
she felt was to be valued, and she even acknowledged
to herself that, had not circumstances placed
an insurmountable barrier between them, Greyslaer
—judging him only by the character he had formed
for himself in the world—Max Greyslaer was the
man of all others to whom her proud and aspiring
heart would have been rendered up.

But, alas! what booted such knowledge now?
Of what avail was it that reason reluctantly at last
sanctioned the preference which a secret tenderness
suggested, when reason was wholly at war with the
indulgence of these partial feelings. Reason, though
she sustained with the one hand the judgment which
guided that partiality, pointed sternly with the other
to an abyss of hopelessness. Alida might love
Greyslaer, but she never could be his.

With minds of a gentler mould, or even with one
lofty as hers, if attempered by the sweet influences
of Religion, a quiet and uncomplaining resignation
would have been the alternative of one thus
weighed down by the hand of fate. But Alida,
though her fervid soul was in a high degree characterized
by that sentiment of natural piety which, existing
in almost every highly-gifted mind, is so often
mistaken for the deeper and more permanent principle
which alone deserves the name of true religion—Alida

had never yet known that sober, solemn,
and holy conserving influence by whose aid alone,
the preacher tells us, we may possess our minds in
peace. She rebelled against the lot to which she
seemed doomed as a disappointed, if not broken-hearted
woman. She would struggle against the
blind pressure of circumstance, and war till the last
with the fate which only served to exasperate while
it overshadowed her spirit.

It is strange how, while most minds grow haughty,
exacting, and imperious from success, misfortune,
so far from bringing humility with it, produces
precisely the same effect in others; they seem to
harden in the struggle with sorrow, and grow insolent
as they gain knowledge of their own powers of
endurance.

“I'll go no more,” said Greyslaer one evening,
as, throwing himself dejectedly into the saddle, he
passed through the gate which opened upon the
grounds of the Hawksnest, and turned his horse's
head toward the garrison; “I'll go no more. Had
her reception been merely cold and formal after the
long interval I have ceased visiting her, I should not
have complained of such notice of my neglect; for
she, perhaps, never suspects the cause that keeps me
away. But those two fingers so carelessly accorded
to my grasp, with that light laugh as she turned
round in speaking to that group of idlers, even in
the moment that I was expressing my pleasure at
seeing her—pshaw! there are no sympathies between
that woman and myself; there never was,
there never can be any;” and he struck the rowels
into his horse almost fiercely, as, thus bitterly musing,
one angry thought after another chased through
his mind.

“And what if she is?” he exclaimed, reining up
suddenly again to a slower pace. “What if she is

wayward, fretful, and exacting to me alone of all
other men? Forgetful of the devoted and all-absorbing
love I have borne her; forgetful of the feelings
which, save on that terrible night only, I have
always kept trained in obedience to what I deemed
her happiness. She never attempted to inspire this
misplaced and mistaken interest; she never lured
me on to the avowal; she never trifled with the emotions
that prompted it. What right have I to arraign
her conduct, to sit in judgment upon her manner
toward me? Her character is the same that I
have ever known it. Her manner toward me? Am
I, then, such an egotist that that is to change my estimation
of her? She does not love me, she cannot
love me; and if she did, is there not this hideous
bar between us? What care I, then, for the show
of interest, when the reality can never be indulged?
No! my part is taken—irretrievably taken, and I
would not recall my choice. For me there is no
fragment of happiness that I can save from the
wreck of the past, but I will still drift with her
wheresoever the sea of events may hurl us.”

It is well for us that it is only in very early life
that we are thus prodigal of our chances of happiness,
and willing to concentrate them all upon a single
issue. Alas! how soon do we learn, in maturer
years, to shift our interest from scheme to scheme;
to see wave after wave, upon which the bark of our
hopes has been upborne, sink from beneath it, until
the very one upon which it was about to float at last
triumphantly, strands us upon the returnless shores
of the grave!

But, though many a worldling has commenced his
experience of life with views hardly less romantic
than those of Max Greyslaer, his was not the mere
wayward devotedness of youth to its first sorrow.
The very constitution of his mind was of a loyal,

venerating kind; (for, deeply imbued as he was, by
the classic culture of his mind, with that ancient, intellectual
spirit of republicanism which had at once
determined his political position in the present civil
struggle, Greyslaer, under another system of education,
would probably have turned out almost a
bigoted royalist;) and the senitment which still attached
him to Alida was nearly akin to that which,
in another age and under other circumstances,
would have inspired his self-devotion to some dethroned
and expatriated prince, like him for whom
one of his immediate ancestors had suffered upon
the scaffold. Had he never declared his passion
for Alida, he might have succeeded in crushing it;
he would certainly have attempted to reason it
away the moment that he discovered that he must
love in vain; but, the avowal once made, he never
dreamed of withdrawing the adhesion he had thus
given in, much less of transferring his affections to
another. He had made an error of choice; a most
unhappy, a most cruel one; but still he would abide
by that choice, whatever consequences might accrue.
The part which Max Greyslear had thus
chosen would, in a rational point of view, become
only an ill-regulated, almost, we might say,
a half-besotted mind. Yet the weakness of choosing
such a part is precisely that which has dwarfed
the growth and distorted the otherwise noble proportions
of minds naturally the most masculine and
commanding.

But the feelings and reflections of Greyslaer, upon
which we have dwelt, perhaps, somewhat too minutely,
received a new direction at this moment, as
he heard the clatter of a horse's hoofs rapidly approaching
in an opposite course to that which he
was travelling. The speed of the coming horseman
seemed to announce that he was either fleeing

from pursuit, or riding upon some errand of the utmost
urgency; and, ere Greyslaer could make out
the figure of the strange rider amid the darkness,
his conjectures as to his character were cut short
by an occurrence which may best be told in another
chapter.

14. CHAPTER XIV.
THE DISCOVERY.

Athenia of Damascus.

There was a blacksmith's shop at the forks of
the road, a few yards in advance of the spot where
Greyslaer, the moment he became aware of the
stranger's approach, had reined up to challenge him
in passing. For, in these times, when almost every
passenger upon the highway was an object of scrutiny,
a horseman who journeyed so hotly by night
naturally awakened suspicion as to his character.

Max, remembering the neighbourhood of the
blacksmith's hovel, thought for a moment that it
might be only some farmer's boy, who, directing
his way thither to have a horseshoe replaced, was
endeavouring by speed to diminish the lateness of
the hour in which he must return homeward when
his errand was finished. But the toils of the blacksmith
seemed already ended for the day, as the
sound of his anvil had ceased, and no light hovered
around his shanty to tell that the bellows was
busy within. The horseman, too, did not check
his speed as he approached the smithy, but came
thundering on as before, evidently about to pass it.
As it chanced, however, the owner of the premises

was still there at work around his smouldering fire;
and in the very moment that the stranger passed
the large unglazed window of the hovel, a sudden
puff of his bellows sent the sparks up from the chimney
of the forge, and threw a ruddy strip of light
across the road. The horse of the stranger, startled
at the sudden glare, shied, and flung his rider upon
the spot.

Greyslaer, who clearly beheld the adventure from
where he stood, spurred forward, threw himself
from the saddle, and assisted the blacksmith, who
had rushed to his door, in raising the fallen man
from the ground. The smith, who was none other
than the doughty Wentz, mentioned in the earlier
chapters of this work, uttered a significant cry of
surprise the moment he beheld the features of the
dismounted traveller; and Max, upon scrutinizing
them more narrowly as they together dragged their
helpless load to the light, was at no loss to recognise
the savage apparition of the Haunted Rock in
the bruised, bedraggled, and crestfallen being before
him.

“You may look for the master where you find
the man,” said Hans, shaking his head wisely as he
dipped a handful of dirty water from the trough in
which he generally cooled his irons, and threw it
in the face of the stunned and senseless man.

“His master?” interrogated Greyslaer, a dark
chain of suspicious and vengeful thoughts forming
in his mind with the rapidity of lightning.

“Well, his leader then—his employer, or whatever
name you would give him who has always used
this chap in his doings when he had work on hand.
He, I say, Wat Bradshawe, must be astir when Red
Wolfert rides abroad after this fashion. It were a
mercy, now, to the whole country, captain, to knock
him in the head with this iron.”

“What! murder a man that lies helpless before
you? Surely, Hans, your heart is not harder than
the flinty road which has just spared the wretch's
life. Lay those pistols out of his reach, however,
and this knife too; he must not handle it on reviving,”
said Max, as the weapons caught his eye
while loosing Valtmeyer's girdle to enable him to
breathe more freely.

“Thousand devils! where am I?” muttered the
brigand, opening his eyes, and quickly closing them
again, as if the glare from the forge offended his
sight.

“In safe hands enough, Wolfert,” answered the
blacksmith, as Greyslaer silently motioned him to
reply.

“Aha! whose voice is that?” cried the ruffian,
rubbing his bloodshot eyes, but not yet raising his
head, as he rolled them from side to side. “Hans
Blacksmith, was it you that spoke, good Hans?
Thousand devils! where's my mare?”

“Far enough by this time, I guess, from the
round rate in which she scoured down the south
fork. Are you hurt much?”

“Um........ Has Greyslaer, the rebel captain,
passed along here yet to-night?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because we mustn't let him go by, that's all.”

“We! Why, you're drunk, Wolfert. Do you
think I will aid you in stopping passengers on the
People's highway?”

Valtmeyer answered only by raising himself upon
the bench whereon he had been laid; but he moved
so stiffly and slowly that Greyslaer had time to
withdraw a few steps within the deep shadows of
the place.

“Drunk, you say, um......” and the desperado fumbled
around his waist for the arms he generally

wore there. “Donder und blixem! who in the
name of h—ll has removed my arms?”

“Your belt must have burst a buckle when you
were thrown,” replied Hans, calmly.

Valtmeyer fixed a penetrating gaze upon his
countenance; but the immobility of the blacksmith's
features taught him nothing. He raised himself to
his feet with a slight groan, paused, and passed his
hands down his sides, as if to feel whether or not
his ribs were broken; and then, without saying a
word, moved toward the single tallow candle which,
stuck into a gourd, stood on the anvil near by.

“I can't spare my only candle; if it's your arms
you want to look for,” said Hans, stepping forward,
“the night air will flare it all away. Nobody will
touch your belt where it lies atween now and to-morrow
morning.”

The outlaw, glowering upon him, muttered something
inaudible in reply; and, without heeding the
behest of Hans, seized upon the candle. The first
movement he made in lifting it threw the light full
upon Greyslaer. Valtmeyer, in his surprise, let the
gourd fall from his hands, and the taper it held was
instantly extinguished in the black dust beneath his
feet. There was now barely light enough from the
forge to distinguish the outlines of his person where
he stood, and, by plunging instantly into the surrounding
darkness, he might at once have escaped.
But, uttering the cry of “Treachery” in the moment
he let the candle fall, he snatched from the furnace
a red-hot iron—a crowbar, as it seemed from its
size—and, swinging it double-handed about his
head, made for the door.

The entrance to the hovel lay in deep shadow,
but his glowing weapon betrayed his position as he
dashed from one side to the other to find the means
of exit. Hans struck at him repeatedly with a cold

iron which he had caught up at the first onset; but
Valtmeyer, at one moment whirling his terrible
truncheon like a flail about his ears, and launching
it forward like a harpoon the next, not only warded
off the attack, but in one of his thrusts fairly bore
Hans to the ground; while the leathern apron of
the blacksmith, shrivelling up at the contact, alone
prevented the red-hot iron from passing through his
body.

As Hans stumbled over a billet of wood in falling,
Valtmeyer might yet have followed up his advantage;
but Greyslaer, who, with drawn sword, had
planted himself in the doorway to prevent his escape
in the first instance, now rushed forward and
dealt a blow which would have smitten any common
man to the earth, and even the brawny Valtmeyer
went down on one knee beneath it. A single
thrust with the rapier's point would here have
terminated his career; but Max, seeing him drop
the crowbar as if his right arm had been paralyzed
from his shoulder, was thrown off his guard by
Valtmeyer's apparently defenceless condition, and
in another instant the active ruffian was beyond the
reach of his sword.

There was a long, low, open window, such as are
usual in a blacksmith's shanty, near where Valtmeyer
fell, and the sill of which he had grasped
with his left hand in falling. Through this he flung
himself, unharmed by the pistol-shot with which
Greyslaer almost simultaneously accompanied his
sudden movement.

Max leaped instantly after him in pursuit; but,
as the fugitive became invisible in the surrounding
darkness, he turned to secure his horse, of which
the outlaw might otherwise make prize. Hans appeared
the next moment with a light. They traced
Valtmeyer by the blood from his sword-cut for a

few yards only. The dust of the road was spotted
with it, but the dew lay heavy upon the grass which
bordered it, and there were thickets opposite, into
which he must instantly have plunged after crossing
the highway.

Valtmeyer's belt for holding his arms, to which
his bullet-pouch was still attached, was the first
thing that caught Greyslaer's eye as he re-entered
the cabin. The weapons he handed over to Hans,
who seemed better contented with the issue of the
night's adventure as he scrutinized his share of the
spoils with a workman-like eye. But the seams of
the girdle enclosed matters far more interesting to
Max than the ammunition with which the pouch
was stored. There were letters from some of the
leading Tories in Albany, who, as is now well
known, maintained throughout the war a secret correspondence,
which the sagacious Schuyler, in order
to avail himself of the intelligence from Canada
thus procured, wisely permitted to go forward so
long as he could successfully counterplot with these
subtle traitors. These papers were, of course, to
be forwarded at once to the Committee of Safety at
Albany. But there were also letters relating to
private matters which awakened a deeper personal
interest in Greyslaer, and whose contents he did not
feel called upon himself to communicate, save to the
parties immediately interested. One of them was
from the famous Joe Bettys to Bradshawe himself;
and the heart of Greyslaer thrilled within him as
he read the following passage:

“Wolfert will do all that is necessary among our
friends in the Valley. The business on hand in this
district will not allow us both to leave it. The best
rallying-point is somewhere among the Scotch
clearings north of the Mohawk. The Cave of Waneonda,
you may depend upon it, will never do;

and that for more reasons than one. Your revival
of that c—d D. R. affair must have made it more
or less notorious. How the devil did that wench
slip through your fingers? Valtmeyer has explained
the matter to me a dozen times, but I cannot
understand it. Zounds! I would like to make an
honest woman of that mettlesome huzzy myself.
But your claim must ever prevent her becoming
Mistress Joe Bettys. By-the-way, Wat, did she
ever suspect who played the parson's part in the
beginning of that wild business? The jade must
some day know how much she is beholden to me;
but the secret, I need hardly tell you, is safe until
the endorsement of a genuine black-coat shall make
all things secure. Had you been the man I took
you for, the girl would have gone on her knees to
ask for it before you ever let her escape from Waneonda.
But to return,” &c.

Greyslaer could read no farther. The characters
swam before his eyes; his senses became dizzied;
and, were it not for the support of the workbench
against which he leaned, he must have fallen to the
ground. It was but for an instant, however, that
he was thus unmanned, and it were impossible to
say what feeling predominated in the conflicting
emotions which for that first moment overwhelmed
him; though a wild joy, an eager and confident
hope prompted his next movement, as, calling in
an agitated voice for his horse, he waited not for
Hans to pass out of the door, but, brushing almost
rudely past him, threw himself into the saddle, and
galloped off in the direction of the Hawksnest.

The astounded smith stood listening for a few
moments to his horse's footfalls as they rapidly died
away in the distance, shook his head, and touched
his forehead significantly, as if he feared that all
were not right with his young friend; then slowly

withdrawing into his shop, he shot the bolt behind
him, extinguished the fires, and, taking up the outlaw's
belt, which he paused to examine again for a
moment, passed through a side wicket into a log
cabin which adjoined the shed, and constituted his
humble dwelling.

Greyslaer, before reaching the Hawksnest, was
challenged by the party of his friends whom he met
returning from their evening visit, and whose approach,
though the young officers rode gayly along,
talking and laughing with each other, he did not
notice till he was in the midst of them. A few
hurried words, suggesting on their part that he must
have forgotten something of importance, and implying
upon his that he would overtake them before
they reached the garrison, was all that passed between
them as he brushed impatiently by.

The family had all retired when he reached the
homestead; but a light still burned in Alida's apartments.
He threw his rein over the paling, and,
after trying the outer door in vain, stepped back
from the verandah, and looked to the only window
through which the light appeared. The curtain
was drawn, but a shadow, which ever and anon fell
across it, showed that the inmate of the chamber
had not yet sought her repose. It was with Alida
alone that he must secure an interview; and Max,
in the agitation of his spirits, did not hesitate at the
first means which presented themselves. There
was on that side of the house a porch, with a balcony
over it, having a single window cut down to
the floor. This window opened into Alida's dressing-room,
which communicated with her bedchamber.
Greyslaer clambered to the top of the balcony,
and tapped against the panes of glass in the
moment that the light was extinguished.

“Fear not,” he said, “it is I, Max Greyslaer. I

come with tidings of such import to you that I could
not sleep before possessing you of them.”

Alida, hastily throwing a loose wrapper around
her person, opened the casement. “Heavens!
Captain Greyslaer,” she exclaimed, “what urgent
peril can have—my brother Derrick, it is not of
him—”

“No, no, no peril—nothing of Derrick—undo the
door below—it is of you—it is your concerns alone
which have brought me here at this untimely hour.”

“Is the matter, then, so pressing? Can we not
wait till morning?” said Alida, in strange agitation.

“I cannot trust it till the morrow. It cannot
sleep, I must not move from near you, till you hear
it.”

“Speak it out at once, then, Max, for my poor
nerves will not bear this suspense,” said Alida, with
increasing tremour of voice.

“I cannot speak it all; I must have light to reveal
it by. See here this written paper, Alida.”

“And what does it say?” she replied, with forced
calmness. “Tell me, Max Greyslaer; if it be
good or evil, I had rather receive it from your lips
than from any other source.”

“Heaven bless you for those words. My tidings
are far from evil, yet I scarce know how to break
them to you. There was a bird—do you remember
it, Alida, one day in years gone by?—a bird that
we watched together as it sat crouched upon the
lowest bough of yonder chestnut, while a hawk
long hovered mid the topmost branches; it seemed
withering in the shadow of those ill-omened wings.
A chance shot from Derrick at a distance frighted
the falcon from his perch of vantage; but the besieged
songster also fell to the ground at sound of
the report which drove his enemy from his stooping-place,
and seemed like to perish, when you

caught up the little trembler and cherished him in
your bosom.”

“Oh! Max, what mean these wild words, spoken
at such a time?” said Alida; for this fanciful
allusion seemed so unsuited to the earnest purposes
of the moment, and was so unlike the wonted manly
directness of Greyslaer's mind, that, coupled
with his agitated manner and the other strange circumstances
of the interview, Alida was shocked for
the moment with the apprehension that his brain
might be disordered.

“Nay, but they are not unmeaning, if you will
but interpret them, Alida! Have you not sat thus
beneath the withering wing of sorrow? Have you
not been ruthlessly hawked at, and made the prey
of villany the most hideous? And has not chance,
or God's own Providence call it rather, brought the
hour of relief which is come even now?”

“Is he dead, then?” whispered Alida, clasping
her hands, as a light seemed to break in upon her
from Greyslaer's words.

“Dead? ay!—no, not that; but he is to you as
if he never lived. They deceived you, Alida; the
supposed ties which so manacled your soul had
never yet an existence; it was a false marriage, a
fiendlike and most damnable contrivance to destroy
you. Look not so doubtful and bewildered. I
have the written evidence of what I say! Alida,
dearest Alida, speak—speak and tell me that you
doubt not. It is I, Max Greyslaer, who always
loved, and never yet deceived you; it is I—”

But Alida was mute and motionless. Her tottering
knees had failed to support her, though she
clung to the dressing-table near which she stood for
support. Greyslaer quickly passed through the
window, and, catching her fainting form from the
floor, bore her out to the balcony. Supporting her

there on one knee, he anxiously chafed her pulses,
while the refreshing breeze of night, playing through
the long tresses which drooped over her shoulders,
aided in reviving his lovely burden.

The moon, which was in its last quarter, at this
moment cast above the trees the golden light she
loves to shed in waning. The mellow beam caught
the opening eyes of Alida, and a tear—the first
Max had ever seen her shed—trembled upon their
lids as she turned from that soft harbinger of happier
days to the soulful face of her lover. The impulse
is resistless which makes Greyslaer, in that
moment, snatch her to his bosom. “Yes, dearest
Max, I will be yours:” are not those the words she
murmurs in reply to his caress?

She paused; and in that pause there was an Elysian
moment for them both. But in another instant
Alida extricates herself from his embrace; and
though she suffers him still to retain her hand, her
voice is yet somehow painfully constrained and altered
as she speaks what follows.

“Ah! Greyslaer, I fear me this flood of happiness
has come in too quickly to last for either of
us. That paper may be—nay, look not thus hurt—
I doubt not that it contains sufficient to produce
entire conviction in your mind as well as mine; for,
had it not been for the deep reliance I place upon
your judgment, Max—a judgment so far beyond
your years—I should never have betrayed the feelings
you have beheld this night. But, whatever be
the fate of the regard I bear you, Greyslaer, you
have won it, and it is yours. No, never would I
recall this hour.” Max mutely pressed her hand to
his lips, and she went on. “But it is a strange and
dark story of which we have now the threads in our
hands, and I shudder with the fear that, deeming
too quickly we have unravelled it all, there may be

others interwoven with it not so easy to disentangle.
My name must be cleared, not only to your
satisfaction, Greyslaer, but to that of all who have
ever heard its sound, before I will change it for
yours; and in these troubled times it is long before
I can hope for such a result.”

“Your name, Alida! None have ever, none dare
ever, connect that with dishonour. Your name!
Why, this terrible secret has been so kept from the
world, that I never dreamed of mystery attending
you till you yourself revealed that there was one.”

“Yes, in the class with which we have most
mingled, my story is but little known; but there
must be many of the country people of a different
grade, though worthy of respect as those who sometimes
pretend to engross it all, who cannot but have
heard of it; and I would not have the simplest rustic
cherish a memory that can do irreverence to the
wife of Greyslaer. Let us wait, dearest Max; wait
till time—till chance, which has already done so
much for me, shall determine still farther. Till
then, affianced to you in soul Alida will still remain;
and, whate'er betide, she will never be another's.”

Greyslaer, who knew too well the character of
Alida to remonstrate against her purpose when settled,
determined at least to defer whatever he had
to urge against her resolution until a more propitious
season. Besides, with a lover's thoughtful consideration,
he feared that the night air might blow too
chilly upon the loosely-arrayed person of Alida to
render it safe to protract the interview. They parted—not
with the fond and caressing adieux of newer
and happier lovers, but when the hand which
Greyslaer was loath to release trembled in his pressure
as he bade farewell, he stooped to print a single
kiss upon the pale cheek which was not withdrawn
from him.

And now, good steed, thou bearest a different
man upon thy back from him who has thrice already
guided thee over the same road to-night. The
stern and disappointed man that, with firm hand and
even rein, bent his twilight course hither: the
moody and abstracted lover that loitered homeward
at a fitful pace: the wild-riding horseman, who spurred
ahead, as if each moment were of importance
to solve the riddle he had already read—were not
each and all of these a different being from the
buoyant cavalier who now, with ringing bridle, gallops
gayly over hill and dale, leaning forward now
to pat thy glossy neck and speak cheering words
of encouragement, and now rising in the stirrup as
if his happy spirit vaulted upward at each gallant
bound beneath him? Surely there is a music in
the good horse's motions which times itself ever to
our mood, whate'er the changes be.

Alas! many were the changes of mood that Greyslaer
was yet doomed to know ere the story of his
strange love was ended. But of the delay that sickens
hope, the doubts that wither it; of the chilling
thoughts, the shadowy fears of the future, he dreamed
not, cared not now, more than he did for the
clouds which crept over the skies and obscured the
path before him. His mind was filled with but one
idea, which excluded all others. He knew—what
once to know or once to believe, in that first hour
of belief or knowledge, makes all the world a Paradise
around—He knew that he was BELOVED.

Shall we pause to paint the next interview between
Max and Alida—when the happy lover won
from her lips the final words of her full betrothal to
him? Shall we describe those which followed,
when Max, with arguments she did not wish to answer,
convinced her that there was now no real bar
to their wedded happiness, and she yielded up all

thought of seeking redress for her wrongs, save
through him who was shortly to become the rightful
guardian of her honour; to the friend who had
already become dearer to her than her life? Shall
we tell how the softening influence of love gradually
melted the Amazonian spirit of her earlier day, until
the romantic dream of retribution, which had so
sternly strung the soul of the once haughty Alida,
became lost at last in the loving woman's tender
fears lest Bradshawe, now so far removed from the
vengeance of her lover, should yet cross his path?
Shall we dwell upon the transports of feeling which
agitated the soul of Max, now burning with impatience
to exact such retribution, and now absorbed
in a wild confusion of delight as the day approached
which would make Alida his for ever?

Or shall we rather describe his chafing vexation
and her mute forebodings when the call of
military honour, abruptly summoning him away to
distant and dangerous duty, deferred that blessed
expectation of their union to a period which the
fearful chances of civil war only could determine?

Shall we follow the patriot soldier in his bright
career of achievement, as, courted and caressed by
the glowing eyes and chivalrous spirits of the South,
he measures his sword with the boldest of his country's
invaders, or mingles with few superiors in
council among the noblest of his country's defenders?
Shall we survey him in that broader field of
action, where the indulgence of personal animosity
and schemes of vengeance against a mere adventurer
like Bradshawe are forgotten and swallowed
up in the more general and nobler interests that
press upon him; but where the image of Alida is
still as dear to his mind as when last he waved a
reluctant adieu to his native valley?

But no, young Max, it is not for us to track the

meteor windings of thy soldierly career amid those
thrilling scenes which Lee, Sumter, Pickens, Marion,
and Tarlton their gallant foe, have since immortalized
in guerilla story, and made the heritage
of other names than thine. The record of thy exploits
is fully chronicled, mayhap, in one true heart
only, and that grows daily sadder as it counts the
hours of thy absence and dreams of the friend who
is far away.