University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.
THE DOUBTFUL PARENTAGE.

Simms.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

beloved phantom which seemed melting before
them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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