University of Virginia Library

22. EDGAR HUNTLY.
CHAPTER XXII.

The road was intricate and long.
It seemed designed to pervade the forest
in every possible direction. I frequently
noticed cut wood, piled in heaps upon
either side, and rejoiced in these tokens
that the residence of men was near. At
length I reached a second fence, which
proved to be the boundary of a road still
more frequented. I pursued this, and presently
beheld, before me, the river and
its opposite barriers.

This object afforded me some knowledge
of my situation. There was a
ford over which travellers used to pass,

and in which the road that I was now
pursuing terminated. The stream was
rapid and tumultuous, but in this place
it did not rise higher than the shoulders.
On the opposite side was an highway,
passable by horses and men, though not
carriages, and which led into the midst of
Solebury. Should I not rush into the
stream, and still aim at reaching my
uncle's house before morning? Why
should I delay?

Thirty hours of incessant watchfulness
and toil, of enormous efforts and
perils, preceded and accompanied by
abstinence and wounds, were enough to
annihilate the strength and courage of
ordinary men. In the course of them, I had
frequently believed myself to have reached
the verge beyond which my force
would not carry me, but experience as
frequently demonstrated my error.
Though many miles, were yet to be

traversed, though my clothes were once
more to be drenched and loaded with
moisture, though every hour seemed to
add somewhat to the keenness of the
blast: yet how should I know, but by trial,
whether my stock of energy was not sufficient
for this last exploit?

My resolution to proceed was nearly
formed, when the figure of a man moving
slowly across the road, at some distance
before me, was observed. Hard by this
ford lived a man by name Bisset, of
whom I had slight knowledge. He
tended his two hundred acres with a
plodding and money-doating spirit, while
his son overlooked a Grist-mill, on the
river. He was a creature of gain, coarse
and harmless. The man whom I saw before
me might be he, or some one belonging
to his family. Being armed for defence,
I less scrupled a meeting with any thing

in the shape of man. I therefore called.
The figure stopped and answered me,
without surliness or anger. The voice
was unlike that of Bisset, but this person's
information I believed would be of
some service.

Coming up to him, he proved to be
a clown, belonging to Bisset's habitation.
His panic and surprise on seeing me
made him aghast. In my present garb
I should not have easily been recognized
by my nearest kinsman, and much less
easily by one who had seldom met me.

It may be easily conceived that my
thoughts, when allowed to wander from
the objects before me, were tormented
with forebodings and inquietudes on account
of the ills which I had so much
reason to believe had befallen my family.
I had no doubt that some evil had happened,
but the full extent of it was still
uncertain. I desired and dreaded to

discover the truth, and was unable to
interrogate this person in a direct manner.
I could deal only in circuities and
hints. I shuddered while I waited for
an answer to my inquiries.

Had not Indians, I asked, been lately
seen in this neighbourhood? Were they
not suspected of hostile designs? Had
they not already committed some mischief?
Some passenger, perhaps, had
been attacked; or fire had been set to
some house? On which side of the river
had their steps been observed, or any
devastation been committed? Above the
ford or below it? At what distance from
the river?

When his attention could be withdrawn
from my person and bestowed
upon my questions, he answered that
some alarm had indeed been spread
about Indians, and that parties from
Solebury and Chetasko were out in pursuit

of them, that many persons had been
killed by them, and that one house in
Solebury had been rifled and burnt on
the night before the last.

These tidings were a dreadful confirmation
of my fears. There scarcely
remained a doubt: but still my expiring
hope prompted me to inquire to whom
did the house belong?

He answered that he had not heard
the name of the owner. He was a stranger
to the people on the other side of
the river.

Were any of the inhabitants murdered?

Yes. All that were at home except
a girl whom they carried off. Some said
that the girl had been retaken?

What was the name? Was it Huntly?

Huntly? yes. No. He did not know.
He had forgotten.

I fixed my eyes upon the ground. An
interval of gloomy meditation succeeded.
All was lost, all for whose sake I desired
to live, had perished by the hands of
these assassins. That dear home, the
scene of my sportive childhood, of my
studies, labours and recreations, was
ravaged by fire and the sword: was
reduced to a frightful ruin.

Not only all that embellished and
endeared existence was destroyed, but
the means of subsistence itself. Thou
knowest that my sisters and I were
dependants on the bounty of our uncle.
His death would make way for the succession
of his son, a man fraught with
envy and malignity: who always testified
a mortal hatred to us, merely because we
enjoyed the protection of his father.
The ground which furnished me with
bread was now become the property of

one, who, if he could have done it with
security, would gladly have mingled
poison with my food.

All that my imagination or my heart
regarded as of value had likewise perished.
Whatever my chamber, my closets,
my cabinets contained, my furniture, my
books, the records of my own skill, the
monuments of their existence whom I
loved, my very cloathing, were involved
in indiscriminate and irretreivable destruction.
Why should I survive this
calamity?

But did not he say that one had
escaped? The only females in the family
were my sisters. One of these had been
reserved for a fate worse than death; to
gratify the innate and insatiable cruelty
of savages by suffering all the torments
their invention can suggest, or to linger
out years of dreary bondage and unintermitted
hardship in the bosom of the

wilderness. To restore her to liberty;
to cherish this last survivor of my unfortunate
race was a sufficient motive to
life and to activity.

But soft! Had not rumour whispered
that the captive was retaken? Oh! who
was her angel of deliverance? Where
did she now abide? Weeping over the
untimely fall of her protector and her
friend. Lamenting and upbraiding the
absence of her brother? Why should I
not haste to find her? To mingle my
tears with hers, to assure her of my
safety and expiate the involuntary
crime of my desertion, by devoting all
futurity to the task of her consolation
and improvement?

The path was open and direct. My
new motives, would have trampled upon
every impediment and made me reckless
of all dangers and all toils. I broke
from my reverie, and without taking

leave or expressing gratitude to my informant,
I ran with frantic expedition towards
the river, and plunging into it
gained the opposite side in a moment.

I was sufficiently acquainted with
the road. Some twelve or fifteen miles
remained to be traversed. I did not fear
that my strength would fail in the performance
of my journey. It was not my
uncle's habitation to which I directed
my steps. Inglefield was my friend. If
my sister had existence, or was snatched
from captivity, it was here that an asylum
had been afforded to her, and here was
I to seek the knowledge of my destiny.
For this reason having reached a spot
where the road divided into two branches,
one of which led to Inglefield's and
the other to Huntly's, I struck into the
former.

Scarcely had I passed the angle
when I noticed a building, on the right

hand, at some distance from the road.
In the present state of my thoughts, it
would not have attracted my attention,
had not a light gleamed from an upper
window, and told me that all within
were not at rest.

I was acquainted with the owner of
this mansion. He merited esteem and
confidence, and could not fail to be acquainted
with recent events. From him
I should obtain all the information that
I needed, and I should be delivered from
some part of the agonies of my suspense.
I should reach his door in a few minutes,
and the window-light was a proof that
my entrance at this hour would not disturb
the family, some of whom were
stirring.

Through a gate, I entered an avenue
of tall oaks, that led to the house. I
could not but reflect on the effect which
my appearance would produce upon the

family. The sleek locks, neat apparel,
pacific guise, sobriety and gentleness of
aspect by which I was customarily distinguished,
would in vain be sought in
the apparition which would now present
itself before them. My legs, neck and
bosom were bare, and their native hue
were exchanged for the livid marks of
bruises and scarrifications. An horrid
scar upon my cheek, and my uncombed
locks; hollow eyes, made ghastly by abstinence
and cold, and the ruthless passions
of which my mind had been the
theatre, added to the musquet which I
carried in my hand, would prepossess
them with the notion of a maniac or
ruffian.

Some inconveniences might hence
arise, which however could not be avoided.
I must trust to the speed with
which my voice and my words should

disclose my true character and rectify
their mistake.

I now reached the principal door of
the house. It was open, and I unceremoniously
entered. In the midst of the
room stood a German stove, well heated.
To thaw my half frozen limbs was my
first care. Meanwhile, I gazed around
me, and marked the appearances of
things.

Two lighted candles stood upon the
table. Beside them were cyder-bottles
and pipes of tobacco. The furniture
and room was in that state which denoted
it to have been lately filled with
drinkers and smokers, yet neither voice,
nor visage, nor motion were any where
observable. I listened but neither above
nor below, within or without, could any
tokens of an human being be perceived.

This vacancy and silence must have
been lately preceded by noise and concourse

and bustle. The contrast was
mysterious and ambiguous. No adequate
cause of so quick and absolute a
transition occured to me. Having gained
some warmth and lingered some ten or
twenty minutes in this uncertainty, I
determined to explore the other apartments
of the building. I knew not
what might betide in my absence, or
what I might encounter in my search
to justify precaution, and, therefore, kept
the gun in my hand. I snatched a candle
from the table and proceeded into
two other apartments on the first floor
and the kitchen. Neither was inhabited,
though chairs and tables were arranged
in their usual order, and no traces of
violence or hurry were apparent.

Having gained the foot of the staircase,
I knocked, but my knocking was
wholly disregarded. A light had appeared
in an upper chamber. It was

not, indeed, in one of those apartments
which the family permanently occupied,
but in that which, according to rural
custom, was reserved for guests; but it
indubitably betokened the presence of
some being by whom my doubts might
be solved. These doubts were too tormenting
to allow of scruples and delay.
—I mounted the stairs.

At each chamber door I knocked, but
I knocked in vain. I tried to open, but
found them to be locked. I at length
reached the entrance of that in which a
light had been discovered. Here, it was
certain, that some one would be found;
but here, as well as elsewhere, my knocking
was unnoticed.

To enter this chamber was audacious,
but no other expedient was afforded me
to determine whether the house had any
inhabitants. I, therefore, entered, though

with caution and reluctance. No one
was within, but there were sufficient
traces of some person who had lately
been here. On the table stood a travelling
escrutoire, open, with pens and ink-stand.
A chair was placed before it,
and a candle on the right hand. This
apparatus was rarely seen in this country.
Some traveller it seemed occupied this
room, though the rest of the mansion
was deserted. The pilgrim, as these appearances
testified, was of no vulgar
order, and belonged not to the class of
periodical and every-day guests.

It now occurred to me that the occupant
of this appartment could not be far
off, and that some danger and embarrassment
could not fail to accrue from being
found, thus accoutred and garbed, in a
place sacred to the study and repose of
another. It was proper, therefore, to
withdraw, and either to resume my journey,

or wait for the stranger's return,
whom perhaps some temporary engagement
had called away, in the lower and
public room. The former now appeared
to be the best expedient, as the return
of this unknown person was uncertain,
as well as his power to communicate the
information which I wanted.

Had paper, as well as the implements
of writing, lain upon the desk, perhaps
my lawless curiosity would not have scrupled
to have pryed into it. On the first
glance nothing of that kind appeared,
but now, as I turned towards the door,
somewhat, lying beside the desk, on the
side opposite the candle, caught my attention.
The impulse was instantaneous
and mechanical, that made me leap to
the spot, and lay my hand upon it. Till
I felt it between my fingers, till I brought
it near my eyes and read frequently the
inscriptions that appeared upon it, I was

doubtful whether my senses had deceived
me.

Few, perhaps, among mankind have
undergone vicissitudes of peril and wonder
equal to mine. The miracles of
poetry, the transitions of enchantment,
are beggarly and mean compared with
those which I had experienced: Passage
into new forms, overleaping the bars of
time and space, reversal of the laws of
inanimate and intelligent existence had
been mine to perform and to witness.

No event had been more fertile of
sorrow and perplexity than the loss of
thy brother's letters. They went by
means invisible, and disappeared at a moment
when foresight would have least
predicted their disappearance. They
now placed themselves before me, in a
manner equally abrupt, in a place and
by means, no less contrary to expectation.
The papers which I now seized

were those letters. The parchment cover,
the string that tied, and the wax
that sealed them, appeared not to have
been opened or violated.

The power that removed them from
my cabinet, and dropped them in this
house, a house which I rarely visited,
which I had not entered during the last
year, with whose inhabitants I maintained
no cordial intercourse, and to
whom my occupations and amusements,
my joys and my sorrows, were unknown,
was no object even of conjecture. But
they were not possessed by any of the
family. Some stranger was here, by
whom they had been stolen, or into
whose possession, they had, by some
incomprehensible chance, fallen.

That stranger was near. He had
left this apartment for a moment. He
would speedily return. To go hence,

might possibly occasion me to miss him.
Here then I would wait, till he should
grant me an interview. The papers
were mine, and were recovered. I would
never part with them. But to know by
whose force or by whose stratagems I
had been bereaved of them thus long,
was now the supreme passion of my soul,
I seated myself near a table and anxiously
awaited for an interview, on which I
was irresistably persuaded to believe
that much of my happiness depended.

Meanwhile, I could not but connect
this incident with the destruction of my
family. The loss of these papers had
excited transports of grief, and yet, to
have lost them thus, was perhaps the
sole expedient, by which their final preservation
could be rendered possible.
Had they remained in my cabinet, they
could not have escaped the destiny which
overtook the house and its furniture.

Savages are not accustomed to leave
their exterminating work unfinished.
The house which they have plundered,
they are careful to level with the ground.
This not only their revenge, but their
caution prescribes. Fire may originate
by accident as well as by design, and
the traces of pillage and murder are
totally obliterated by the flames.

These thoughts were interrupted by
the shutting of a door below, and by
foot-steps ascending the stairs. My heart
throbbed at the sound. My seat became
uneasy and I started on my feet. I even
advanced half way to the entrance of
the room. My eyes were intensely fixed
upon the door. My impatience would
have made me guess at the person of this
visitant by measuring his shadow, if his
shadow were first seen; but this was
precluded by the position of the light.
It was only when the figure entered, and

the whole person was seen, that my curiosity
was gratified. He who stood before
me was the parent and fosterer of my
mind, the companion and instructor of
my youth, from whom I had been parted
for years; from whom I believed myself
to be forever separated;—Sarsefield himself!