University of Virginia Library

SECTION III.—Proceeded in.

It was a mild and beautiful morning, that spoke not of
the dark winter whose reign had commenced, but shone
like the deceiving colour on the visage of the sick, which
misleads with hope when it should foretell the dank grave
and the funeral hearse. Few traces remained of the rage
of the late tempest, and these seemed like the tears on
the cheek of beauty, smiling even in her sorrow; the

fresh air, redolent with life, balm and joy—a very thing
of intelligence, breathing health and vigour to man and
nature's renovation, fanned the broad surface of the living
wave, disporting with the pulses of the moving waters,
lifting and spreading out their swelling bosoms, like a warrior
in his hour of dalliance, playing with amorous hand
in the silken locks of his betrothed; while the gay and
laughing light of the young sunbeam danced joyously o'er
the snow and ice embound hill and dale, making them
blaze as strewn with multitudinous gems, diamond and
rose hued; and its genial warmth penetrated unchecked
among the high walls and peaked and blackened
roofs, and clustering chimneys of the city, from whose
tiled pinnacles the wreaths of the melting and decaying
sleet, that like a shroud had covered them, rose like incense
to the shrine of the day god—earth, sky and water
were as animated by one sensation of happiness and festival.

The hour of the day was already somewhat advanced,
and the narrow streets of the city were fast awakening to
their accustomed bustle, and in quick succession the stirring
burghers poured forth from their habitations, delighting
in the clamour and noise their own eager and busy
movements caused. The smart winkelier was arraying
in the most tempting form his wares to the eye of the
passing saunterer; while the shrill and lively notes of the
thriving matron, with voice at topmost key, were heard
from the sanded entries of each awakened dwelling, startling
the half roused and nodding negro to his labour, and
with its fearful sound frightening for the time his laziness
of nature; here and there at the latticed window might
be descried, fair and lovely as the flowers she tended,
with cheek painted with the tint of health, some bashful
maiden, who with soft white hand was cherishing and supporting
the fallen and drooping tendrils of her favourite
plants, amid the odorous waftings of whose delicious fragrance
she moved, a being of light, and life, and youthful
beauty; indeed at this time of the year, in honour of the
approaching `Nieuw Jaar,' there were but few of the
Dutch mansions of the city of New-Yorke, within whose

walls there did not flourish such bloemates as care and tenderness
can preserve in the coldest seasons in bud, bloom
and perfume. In the casements of the richer class might
be seen leaden vases and urns, with large chased portraitures
of fat and jolly divinities who figured in the heathen
mythology, or the more patriotic representations of the
pride of the Netherland arts and arms, the busts of the
De Witts, De Ruyter, or Von Tromp, with triumphal
wreaths, flags, trumpets, and all the paraphernalia of fame
—these, placed on low and painted stands, were filled
with the rarest and most beautiful artimesias, tulips,
and greenhouse exotics of priceless value, each bulb having
its name painted beneath it in large staring letters of
yellow and gilt. And albeit the domiciles of the poorer
sort lacked not the votive circlet for their halls, the ever-green,
the furred branches of the cedar tree, and the
misletoe. All within the prosperous precincts of Nieuw
Amsterdam appeared moving and aroused to business—
none hugged the hot and sickly comfort of the couch, except
the sluggish idler or heavy drunkard, and in those days
there were not many of that kind of miserable wretches
—for as now, it was not made a boast either for late hours,
high feasting, or deep drinking—and it was a bad excuse,
that weighed but little with his crusty Dutch bos, for his
apprentice to plead sickness from debauchery for late attendance
to his duty. The young men were about hitching
their horses to their bowl shaped sleds, cracking their
whips or hailing each other in tones as loud, clear, and
melodious as the music that was drawn by the nose of
Handel, from the great organ at Harlæm. Outwardly,
none bore the impress of the hand of grief, as each one
busied in his avocation, hurried on, though at times the
visage might have deceived by hollow smiles, when the
soul was in agony, that the keen eye of observance
marked not the shadow of existing sorrow;—all was apparently
thoughtless, light of heart, and happy. Arnyte
stood without the walls of his father's prison, and looked
on,—a lone and solitary being, seeming as one unnoted
unregarded, unperceived, and neglected, as it were, by
friends and foes.

The sun shone down in its golden gleam of splendour,
—the breath of heaven,—the murmur of the wave
spoke not strange music to the ear,—the faces of men
were unchanged,—the world seemed not altered in its
pursuits, and yet the fall of Leisler, a thing of yesterday,
appeared erased from men's minds, as though years had
rolled over it. Nathless, conjectures of his fate were
made in the presence of his child, with cold, calculating
indifference, as it were the death of a worm,—a creature
of neither care, price, or estimation, that was debated:
few mourned the event, still fewer cared to hope
or to speak in terms of favour either of the unfortunate
man, or of his acts;—his very family were condemned
with him; they were regarded as a part of the criminal;
and if an eye of pity glanced for the moment's curiosity
on his solitary and deserted son, it was withdrawn as soon
and abrupt, as fearful of being discovered, albeit if
an ill deed or punishable offence had been committed.
Arnyte, however, deadened in his feelings to exterior
subjects by the anguish of his mental afflictions, still
could not but notice that he was the object of neglect
and scrutiny from others,—neglect from such as
he of right might claim in the day of his distress, attendance
and that relief which in them lay, as the remembered
familiars of the decayed fortune of his house,—as
the moths who fluttered in life about the light of his
prosperity—scrutiny from those whose unseen observance
with jealous eye, snake-like, drank in his every
motion, watchful, lest any incident should arise to change
the current of the fate of his doomed family, from means
or guile wherewith uncertain chance should arm him,
even in his present weakness. The first looked with
strange sight on him, or reckless turned their backs from
the glance of greeting, as the wassailer from the new-covered
grave of his mate, to seek the revel, the appetite
for whose wine and harlotry lives keener in his thoughts
than the fresh-closed coffin of his companion; while
the last, with the heedful caution of suspicion that trembles
at a whisper, like the fragile leaf of the anemone,
noted the minutest circumstance of his action. The

pride of the youth arose, mingling with his sorrows a
divided flood of despair and the bitterness of misanthrophy;
he felt the cheerlessness of his situation, that
placed him like an all-shunned beggar, (whose unbandaged
sores beget disgust and scorn,) a being of contempt alone;
and the lofty spirit that lived within the stripling's
breast, though borne down with its load of grief, yet
started from its lowliness of sufferance, and eagle-like,
sprang upwards from the pressure of the foot of contumely.—He
gave with moistened vision one last, long,
lingering look at departure on the dreary walls, within
whose prison confines his parent lay in durance; nor
raised he his sight from that object, until his very soul,
as it were, had leaped from the orbs with which he
gazed, as he would have joined through bars and stone,
him whom they unconsciously severed from his embrace.
And as he wended him onwards in his solitary way, ever
and anon, while the place was yet to be descried, he
would involuntarily, by starts, cast back a piteous glance
towards it, as one who is forced from a casket wherein a
precious jewel is bestowed. He wandered onwards without
a goal, careless whithersoe'er he bent his regardless
steps, so as he fled from the presence of ingrateful man;
for his young heart was weary and sick of his unkindness.
He moved with a wild, unmeasured pace through the
busy streets, as one that took no part of the living throng
that crowded them, but as a solitary, phantom-like thing
wrapt within himself, who, while all others hurried to
and fro in their directed race, each busied in some particular
care of the day was lonely and deserted, brooding
o'er deep and silent spells of inward thought, reckless of
the outward group that passed him in his meditation.
Fearful in the moment of his abstraction were the picturings
of his imagination; ingenious in the invention of
torments to his lacerated feelings, and unbroken by
dreams of hope or confidence,—there swam before his
eyes visions of death, cruel and harrowing, of which vain
were endeavours to disperse—the bloody scaffold,—
the gore dripping axe,—the dim, terrible figure of the
headsman, with savage and triumphant frown; and there
fronted him the bodiless head, whose indistinct visage
grew fast into recognition,—with hair clotted,—pallid and
clayey cheeks, and lips knit in death's agony—his very
flesh trembled at the torturing view; and then arose as
eager of inventive pain, dark and dismal terrors of violence,
of abuse and of poison, that might be committed in
the secrecy of those prison boundaries;—not one of the
thousand ways which could be struck on by the most
desperate murtherer to rid him of a hated foe, but was
painted visibly to the mind of Arnyte; and he shuddered
in very fear at the dread shadows of his alarmed brain.
Thus cherishing and brooding over in secret and silence
his unhappiness, he roamed to the outskirts of the city;
—no tender voice of consolation or assistance,—not one
frank, kind question from the many known in better
days, whom he met ere he attained the Poort, was advanced
at him; and yet it wanted but a whisper of commiseration,
for the heart, sick and tried with grief, in an
instant o'erflows like the eyes of infancy, in whose glassy
brilliance tears and smiles alternate reign, to have unlocked,
as from the sources of a fountain, every channel
of his pent up sorrows—it lacked but the benignant
countenance of pity, and the outstretched arm of protection
to be extended, for the stripling to have grasped at
its support in very helplessness; still as it was, the trials
he had undergone in the past night, he appeared scarce
to be conscious to have suffered; he knew not, or seemed
not to know, as he walked onward, the overpowerings of
fatigue; but his hollow and vacant look, and pallid cheek
bespoke the faintness of his o'er laboured body; however,
he sought no food nor rest, but albeit as lacking
not these, with undetermined course he proceeded beyond
the city pallisades; nathless ere he had gone this
distance, there had been those who had accosted him;
but these were few, and they had approached him with
cold words of comfort, that they decked their lips
withal, but which were far from their hearts. They
were of those who talk of patience, and give counsel to
misery, yet would not stretch their hands to pluck from
the water the drowning man, to whom they had so kindly
lent advice. Arnyte listened impatiently to their guidance;
their busy tones sounded in his ears like the
fretting drone of a gnat; their words worried him to
madness, although that which they taught sank profitless in
his hearing as water in a sieve; for his was not a wo to
be relieved by the timely proverbs or philosophical applications
ever ready in the mouths of such dotard dreamers,
who preach quiet to a wretched soul burdened with adversity,
as they would eat a meal from custom. In truth
the voices of these men and their measured kindness fell
like ice bolts on the soul of the sufferer, searing and
withering instead of healing, for they bared his wounds
to the very quick,—they discovered how wide was his
wretchedness and desolation,—they wrecked at one dark
swoop the youthful enthusiasm of his confiding nature.

The path which Arnyte had unwittingly taken led
direct from the old Water Poort,[10] or East-river gate, over
the suburb street, called the Green-lane, and passing the
Smee's Vly and Beekman's hill, continued to wind along
from the city, by a low, slimy shore, fringed with the
bare and leafless sprouts of the osier, whose winter blackened
branches were hung with multitudinous icicles that
were rattled by the morning breeze, and glittered in the
light of the gay sun, who, from his gorgeous pavilion of
curtaining clouds, dispensed around upon the frosty earth,
—the feathery thorn, and the proud spire, alike, loveliness
and life. Here and there at the side of the way,
were interspersed amid the wild shrubs and stumps that
vein the soil or grow forth like excrescences of nature,
in salt and marshy land,—the scarred trunks of a stunted
polled willow, while at intervals on some small and cleared
space of ground which bore traces of cultivation, rose
on the sight some hovel, half mud and half logs, with
paneless window and patched roof, the dwelling of a
fisher, (for the Dutch landsmen hugged the higher and
richer country,) whose inmate's occupation was proclaimed
by the huge heaps of frozen oyster-shells about the
door, the threshold of which was thronged by sportive
and breechless urchins, regardless of the weather,

playing and tumbling about like young porpoises upon the
surface of the river, or echoing back the call and hail from
the lusty-throated negro, who plied the paddles of the
passing skiff, that shot in sight like an arrow on the green
waters, on its way to the city, loaded with market truck.

Now freed of the city, Arnyte seemed to have shook
off something that had clogged his pace, and his steps
were redoubled, as though the swifter he left behind him
the residence of humanity, the more that which distracted
him was absorbed; the very air relieved him, as he
thought; and now more and more the congregated hum
of man subsided, the less terrible was the conflict of his
mind in appearance; but it deceived;—for still deep and
lasting was the fire that consumed him; he only stilled
his pangs of heart for the moment, as the Spartan boy
cloaked the stolen fox to tear his entrails forth; nathless,
he hurried on, as though he left behind a den of wolves,
from whose rapacious hunger nought was in safety. He
pursued the road, busied with grief, nor noted the kind
salute of the honest boer, as he drove by in his gay sled,
whose jingling bells rang out their merry peal, until he
was far out of sight; nor gave he return to the `Mynheer,
hoe is het met u dis morgen,'—with which he was
addressed by the light-hearted labourer, who with axe
on shoulder, crossed the road towards the upland fields,
and who, surprised at the inattention of the youth to his
social greeting, stood awhile to gaze after his rapid steps,
deeming strange things, in his wonderment, of the unfortunate
stripling, both from his wild looks, and the disordered
pace wherewith he moved, regardless of obstacle
or hurt.

The road which young Leisler had pursued after following
the irregular windings of the beach of the Oost Vloed,
for a considerable distance through a swampy and unfruitful
country, the very pathway at times encroached on from
the water by creeks, and on the land by morasses, at
length opened on a small stream or rather rivulet, which
was called the fresh water river; and which deriving its
birth from a lagoon of fresh water, known by the name of
the De Kolck,[11] at flood times with no insignificant strength

connected the parent pool with the waves of the East
River, whose tide rising several feet higher than that of
its sister river the Nordt Vloed, caused a water communication
across the island; for the fresh water pond on its
opposite side was joined to the lordly Hudson by a streamlet
whose natural channel had been widened by a mill
run. The shores of the De Kolck were diversified with
wind mills and neat Dutch mansions; the first strong and
substantially built with stone, having the dates of their
erection in ornamental figures of iron on their fronts in the
same fashion in which they adorned the gable ends of the
houses in the city, while their huge fans extended at their
sides, seemed like the covering shield of some warlike
form;—and the last raised on the very brink of the water,
and many times ran far out in the lagoon itself, which was
dyked around each dwelling after the manner of some of the
great mansions on the canals in the Vaderlandts, the taste
of whose superstructure and situation had struck the architect's
fancy so potently, that as far as nature would allow,
he had copied it in building in the Nieuw Nederlandts;
so that the owner might step in his schouw from the very
door of his dwelling, or look from his bed-chamber window,
wrapped in his morning gown and covered with his
night cap, and as he smoked his merschaum, eye the dipping
of his poultry in the clear waters of the stream, or
watch the sportive counsel of his thriving congregation
of geese and ducklings as they sailed delighted on the
smooth wave, which ran murmuring in echo to their
amorous parlance about the homesteads of the puissant
masters of their destinies.

At this time the De Kolck was frozen over, and its
mirrored surface presented to the sight a glass whereon
there seemed a reflection of the stilly heavens, unbroken
save where from 'neath the gelid sheet that enclosed the
water, there broke forth in a wild torrent of foam, over
some temporary dam or flood gate, the unbridled current
—the dashing spray wantoning and leaping about as rejoicing
at having burst its thraldom, looked in its wild
and headlong flow like the snowy flakes of froth flung
from the fiery nostrils of a gallant war steed, as he

champs the curb and paws the dust in his impatience—
while the hollow and continued sound of the falling cataract,
chafing in angry mood the encroaching ice, like a
proud spirit contending with an invader, was like the distant
and long repeated noise of a conflict of warring armies,
the echo of whose desperate struggles shakes the
burthened earth; and where the sleety covering of the
liquid element was illuminated by the rays of the morning,
its dazzling and unsullied surface of living chrystal glowed
with tints of every hue that far out-vied the fantasies
of art; cerulean and roseate, sapphire and emerald, mocking
the richest gems of the lapidary.—Here and there scattered
on the face of the imprisoned pond, where the ice
was thickest, could be seen the hardy skater, enwrapped
in his warm cloak and balanced by his poised stick, disporting
and marking out curves and fantastic figures on
the polished and frozen visage of the lagoon—now darting
along swift as a winged shaft shotten from a bow—
now circling and cleaving with rapid heel, quick as the
following of sight itself, the congealed bosom of the
streamlet, anon shooting hither, then thitherward as a
thing borne by the wanton sweep of the invigorating
breeze, at a moment's will, taking one course, pursued
by his eager fellows, and again, like the swoop of the
lammer geyer, round an alpine peak to avoid their playful
grasp, eluding the extended hand of his sanguine
companion, he wheels abrupt unto an adverse way, leaving
his baulked pursuer, unwitting of his drift, to take
a wider circuit,—all skimming away in their revelry, like
a flight of swallows, cutting the clouds in the merriment
of their summer lives. There too, within a stone's cast
of the beach, though often some venturesome little varlet,
was perceived making his way far out towards the
centre of the pool, braving, in his gambols, the mournful
and warning voice of the groaning and creaking ice
on which he rambled, and on whose treacherous support
he relied, while at many times, in mere hardihood of
mischief he enlarged the air holes of the stream by
breaking away the surrounding snow, delighting in the
gladsome gurgling forth of the released waters, nor
dreamed in his rash sport of the danger he tempted,
frolicked troops of merry children, some of whom were
gliding on the breast of the frozen lagoon in mimicry of
the more fortunate skater, with small pieces of wood or
bone fitted to the bottom of their feet, avidious of their
slippery and precarious enjoyment—some, a mingled
band of male and female, black and white, throwing
themselves in various attitudes, grotesque and gamesome,
chased each other in sliding on places, which they, by
repeated and successive trips, had worn smooth as the
finest silk, and on which, it was scarce possible to stand
or walk, without risking a limb to the person who braved
their slipperiness, albeit, well accustomed to so perilous
a labour; some, who with their mates, had deserted the
sides of the slanting, Flattenbarrack, the lofty Golden,
and the noble Potbaker's hills, were engaged in racing
their miniature sledges, that were gayly ornamented
after the style of their originals, which paraded the
streets of New-Yorke to the music of their many tinkling
bells; while these bore the name of some Dutch
hero, skipper, dorp or dogger, fancifully painted and
decorated on them, in accordance to the humour and
whim of the sportive and thoughtless owner, who urged
the course of his ingenious imitation, either astride or
laying on his breast, with legs outstretched, to guide the
route resembling a flying squirrel, except in pace; and
there were others, weary for the time, or the excluded,
albeit, envious of the partakers of the sports from which
they were discarded, that in herds and groups were assembled,
and gazed on the merry career of their competitors.
There was the tender school boy, wrapped
close from the chillness of the raw winter atmosphere
by his careful mother, with ears bandaged and 'kerchief
about his neck, guarding him from sickness, and with hand
warmly encased in his party coloured mittens, whose
clumsy fingers scarce served him to sustain the satchel
that contained the hated task, and which, while he loitered,
remembered him of his Dutch primer, and the surly
frown and uplifted rod of his querulous preceptor, so
apt to disregard the ready tears and faltering excuse.
There too, was the little idler, the young lawless vagabond,
whom the lash, the gentle word, nor scolding,
could control or confine to his duty, with tattered and
crownless hat, through the yawning gaps of which,
peeped his stray and blowsed locks, utterly regardless of
his ragged jacket, wantonly lacerated attire and shoeless
foot, he capered, tossed, tumbled and floundered about, like
an eel fresh drawn from its native element; and now, slily
and unseen, sending at his heedless companions, for the
sake of riot, hardened balls of snow, anon whooping and
shouting, shrieking and yelling from triumph, as his favourite
wins in the game hefore him, though many times
for no reason, except for noise and wantonness—his
hands, toes and face, unprotected and uncovered, and
died to the very redness of the ripened cherry, from
the sharp and piercing breeze as it stole along, gathering
chillness, from the pond itself, while the hardy urchin,
apparently delighted in defying its keenness, rather than
flinched from its pinching and hungered bite. In good sooth,
all on the wide spread De Kolck, from the clumsy garbencumbered
Dutch lad, with his three cornered hat, double
broeks, worsted stockings and plated knee buckles,
the merry eyed maiden with close cut coif, to the grinning
and curly pated offspring of the kitchen negroes
who shared the play, was one throng of holiday laughter
and jocund hilarity—the bright and mirthful glee of
youth—of that spring-tide of life, when sorrow is ever
but as the last drops of a summer shower, through which
sunbeams are breaking—when death and wo are heard
of as a fireside tale, that saddens for a moment the
sparkling countenance, but whose terrors are soon forgotten
in the laugh of joy, and that unrepressed vivacity
less experienced of the instability of hope, which sees
nothing but happier days, and gayer garlands in futurity.
Arnyte paused not a moment on the sight of the happy
rout, for the pleasures of others do but tend to mock
the deserted creature of misery—like green fields and
sunny glades, for which he longs in vain as he gazes
through his prison bars, are to the eyes of the desolate
convict—like the voice of the healthful, in the ear of
the sick man, bringing with its sound but a bitter comparison
of the wretchedness of his poisoned lot; even so
with a face jaundiced with an evil, as if when he had cause
for tears, it were unmeet it should be catered, otherwise
to any, doth he that is racked of heart, regard the
wreathed smile of the gay, or the mingled shout and
tread of revelry or merriment—for misfortune makes
those at whom she darts her snakelike fangs, at once
selfish and envious, turning to the bitterest gall all liberal
and inborn virtue—for its victim deems in the madness
of his trials, that on him alone the curse of Ishmael
hath fallen, that all men's hands are against him, and he
feels as if against all men he could gladly turn the besom
of destruction. Hastily, therefore, did young Leisler
pass over the little bridge of logs that crossed the outlet
or rather arm of the De Kolck, and rushed forward on
the path, which, on the farther side of the rivulet, ascended
with a winding course, a somewhat rising tract
of country, overlooking in its tortuous sweep, the
fresh water pond and all its busy crowd, the sound of
whose diversions, uprose to the higher ground as from
the bosom of a valley. Having kept an uneven route
for a short time, and risen insensibly to a considerable
height above the water, which, caught in glimpses through
clumps of hanging fir trees, gloomy rocks, snow and embedded
ice, looked like a silver mirror, the road suddenly
branched off in two separate ways, the one proceeding
and extending in the neighbourhood of the Oost vloed
towards the Nechtant or Coerlar's Hoek, and the other
running far up in the open country, pursued its course
past the landhuisen of the Bayards, the Rombouts, the
Minthornes, and the Stuyvesants, until it reached Bestavers
Killitjie, and the Spijt den duyvel Kill. The
progress of Arnyte had been somewhat in unison
with the disorder of his mind—at times his pace
was slow, hesitating and thoughtful, with brows bent as
perusing the earth on which they were unconsciously fixed,
and so silent and noiseless was his step that he startled
not, until close upon him, the watchful snow-bird that
sat chirping upon the lowermost branches of the naked
trees that skirted the way-side, and who when frightened
skimmed with his dark wing the frozen surface of the
snowy ground as he sought a safer perch; and then anon
as if by speed he could disperse from his disquieted mind
the horrors of the gloomy clouds that thronged upon him,
he hurried along with rapid, unmindful, and violent
strides and look disturbed and unsettled as one who flies
from the hot pursuit of an armed and deadly foe. It was
in one of these last described paroxysms of grief that he approached
the division of the road, and before he was well
aware of his presence, he came nigh rushing on a person
who had stationed himself at the very fork of the path;
he had but a chance to check his headlong career within
a pace of the stranger, by whom he was unperceived,
and who thus abruptly thrown on the observance of the
youth was one who from the singularity of his position
and appearance, had the power to draw his attention for
the time, having his eye once fixed upon this object, relieving
his more dismal meditations with surprise and conjecture;
for it scarce needed a repetition of his glance for
young Leisler to recognize with wonderment, in spite
of the unlucky disposition of his garments through rags,
filth and tatters the still burley visage and portly form
of Ensign Jost Stoll, whom the fears of the youth had
of a certainty long since given up as a mournful feast to
the grave worm or the mountain eaglet; and in sooth
reader it was our old acquaintance hearty, but somewhat
worn by suffering, yet safe and graphical as ever, in defiance
of the almost unheard of straits, travail, turmoil,
and danger he had undergone since the narrative left him
in consequence of his own obduracy, at the mercy of
the pirate's steel, in the ruined wigwam—a forlorn and
selfentangled sacrifice for the blood-thirsty buccaneer to
satiate his cruel spleen upon for the escape of his intended
victim; and indeed it had fared severely with the
rash amateur, his life had been spared it was true, but
that was nearly all that he had escaped with, being stript
by the plunderer of every article of value, even to his
bare flesh—at the first burst of rage from the pirate at his
being baffled as to Sloughter, the ensign's existence hung
but on a word, and it was but the change of a whim—the
humour of the moment that prevented the luckless wight's
having his heart rent from its casket, an immolation to
the savage fury of the intemperate Kid—but it seemed the
rover being disappointed in the principal object of his
expedition, the capture of Sloughter and the rifling of
the despatches and papers of which the Colonel was the
bearer, and the contents of which as injurious, by authorizing
effective proceedings against his illicit courses,
to the prosperity of the free trade of the buccaneer, by
some secret advices which (an the rumour of the day is
to have credence) came from no mean source, had been
made known to the desperate marauder, he apparently
disdained to wreak his anger or revenge on the mere
secondary personage who was left in his hands;—the first
passion having somewhat subsided in the heat of immediate
pursuit made unsuccessfully after the fugitive captives,
and day fast dawning at the return of those who
had followed the trail, and disliking the incumbrance of
the Ensign in the march, on dispersing his confederates
and Kid's making for his boats which were moored in concealment
and ambush in the nearest inlet to the place
where the scene of the past night had been transacted,
he gave directions to his followers to enlarge the luckless
prisoner, which however was not done until they had
disrobed him completely of every garment to which they
took a fancy, bestowing on him nevertheless in return the
most tattered, worthless, and ragged portions of their own
wardrobes, in spite of every entreaty for moderation made
to their ruthless compassion—and as it were out of mere
malice and wilful fancy, not content with heaping the
most outrageous indignities on the helpless bondsman,
they with most atrocious cruelty beat and pricked him
with their naked cutlasses until his very back ran seams
of welled gore, all the while mocking, with hideous
and brutal laughter, the acuteness of his sufferings;—
and even terrible as were the torments thus inflicted,
the ensign was fortunate that their commander grudged
them time, ere the fierce adventurers could put
in force worse tortures—for there were some among
the band who meditated his murder, for the purpose of
giving, according to their rude and maritime superstition,
charge to his spirit, who, they supposed, would keep
the trust, such wealth and treasure as they had amassed
in their unlawful voyages, and buried or concealed about
the rocks and in the earth around this spot of their harbourage;
for such was the wild idea, that while the
riches were in keeping of the dead, no mortal hand, save
their own, could ever touch them; and under this impression,
many are the golden ingots and wedges,—crosses
of diamonds torn from the hand of the trembling devotee,
moidores, ducats, and pieces of eight, the spoil of the
conquered flota and galleons of Spain, and the haughty
Portuguese, which lay rusting to this day, in the sod of
the Manahadoes, unclaimed and unknown—the hands
which deposited them, being colder, and as powerless
as the metals themselves—the stern acquirers having
perished on the wave, or in the blood-stained
breach of some stormed town, leaving none in the secret
of the gain they left from their dangerous toils, their
murders or their battles, save the eternal heavens, whose
cold and silent moon, gilds, with its light at full, the hidden
spot, but whose direction, living eye can read not—
and the melancholy forest, whose mournful whisper
prates not to human ear of the place of their concealment.
And when indeed at last, the unfeeling tormentors
quitted the sinking object of their brutal sport, yielding
not to a weariness of cruelty, but reluctantly, to the frequent
and impatient calls of their fierce leader, who,
having, as is before shown, dispatched Eumet to carry
the eventful tidings of Sloughter's arrival to Leisler,
and his interested protectors of the faction, embarked
on board his light armed shallop, and spread his broad
sails from the shore; they left the abused soldier nearly
fainting, and almost insensible from excruciating pain,
in a wood path, where they had driven or rather dragged
him, from the neighbourhood of their den, cautious lest
he should know the tract that might discover the wigwam.
Overpowered with weakness, his dull ear awoke
to no sound in that which seemed his last mortal agony,
save the sudden and sharp howl of the hungry and voracious
wolf, as he approached from the neighbouring
brake, and caught the scent of an expected banquet;
the miserable sufferer might have perished on the spot
where he had been cast by the ruthless buccaneer, unable
from weakness, or unwilling from despair, to exert
his remaining powers to a single effort to preserve life,
but for the fortunate approach of a hunter. By the
hardy and compassionate son of the chace, he was assisted
to an adjacent log hut, from whose poor but hospitable
inmates, his wounded limbs and bruised body, received
every tendance and care, their limited resources
could supply; they fed his parched lips with the renovating
balsam of the fever tree, and the juice of the aromatic
anise; they stanched the gory flowings on his lacerated
flesh, with the life-preserving essence of many
a wild Indian herb, unknown to the votaries of science;
the heart-shaped leaves of the deer's tongue, the sassafras
and the star weed, lent their genial powers; and the
rude art of his kind hosts, with needful rest, restored
him far sooner to health, strength and spirits, than could
the false trickeries of the mediciner—so that, having
been set on his way, by his benevolent entertainers, Jost
Stoll had proceeded the distance on the road, when Arnyte
recognised him, to rejoin his late comate and fellow
traveller, the now governor of the colony of New-Yorke.
But however, in the pursuance of this last intention,
the ensign's journey was by no means one of
great expedition—for his route was through the wild
and picturesque land, scarce trodden, and perchance
heretofore unnoted—but on which no eye of painter,
or of the lover of untutored nature, could gaze unmoved,
or pass by without admiration—for as he wended
onwards, now beside the road, there swelled like heavings
of the mountainous billow, high and majestic hills;
less, had been the theme of fame in other lands, but
nameless they stood within the desert and the solitude,
clad in their shroud of winter; the stern gigantic battlements
of nature, along whose icy walls, like armed warriors,
towered skyward mighty and gnarled trees, whose
limbs, brown, bare and without foliage, were stretched
out as defying the tempest to hurl them from their rooted
seats—and now, first on the ear like the hollow rumbling
of an earthquake, and anon, burst on the sight of
the enraptured pedestrian, the roar of the precipice of
waters, as like the timorous hart flying from the pursuing
hound, delirious with affright, the bright wave in flashing
masses of foam and flood, leaped wildly from rock to
rock, while each rude cleft that received the bounding
fall glittered with crystal incrustations and fantastic masses
of ice, the snow white spray freezing as it sprung and
scattered on the dark surface of the granite, like jewels
round the neck of an æthiop; and then as he emerged
from these primeval ramparts of crag and highland, there
would come on the view, the deep and silent glade, the
sloping dells, and the dark forest gorges and defiles, all
lovely and fair to see, even with the fleecy covering of
the season—beautiful in their dreariness, like the young
and innocent in death, upon whose blanched lips sets the
fixed and peaceful smile the spirit left at parting;—and
yet withal, the white and ghastly desolation, told not of
the rich and holiday aspect, worn by those wild and solitary
vales, rugged crags, and desert glens, in their hour
of summer glory, few of whose relics remained, and
these hung like withered trophies in the winter's dreariness;
no more the ground glowed in its carpet of deep
green sward, from whose rich sod leaped up the wildling
green and budding woodland flower, fresh in its childhood,
making redolent with its aromatic breath the
odorous breeze with living fragrance; no more the juniper,
the ivy vine, and the rhodendrum, clung to the
fissures and crevices of the rocks, swathing their iron
breasts as with a mantle; the copsewood was no longer
garlanded with dewy foliage, nor did the luxuriant trees
flaunt their spiry heads as wont, like gay banners o'er a
festal rout; the busy winglet of the humming bird was
hushed, and the stock dove's gentle murmurings, filled
not the air with music longer—but all the scene was naked—desolate,
as if a blast had come upon the beauty
and the pride of that fair wilderness, and stricken its
splendours with the pallidness and coldness of the silent
tomb. As the doughty ensign passed through this romantic
country, he found that neither the danger that it
had exposed him to, nor the sufferings which he had endured
mainly for its sake, had expelled his ancient passion
and habit, but it came on him as with redoubled
force, and frequent were its irresistible promptings and
attacks, that induced him to linger on the dale, and pause
enraptured, on the peak of mount and hill as he soberly
trudged forward, that at leisure, his eager eye might
drink in the boundless prospect, and all the liberal profuseness
of creation, whose blooming and brightest
wealth, thus as it were unknown, unculled, and nearly
unseen by human eye, bespoke how little was the world
made for the vain creature of humanity, who hath the
audacity to claim it as his own—man fond man, a god in
presumption, and yet a mote, an atom, in reality—worthless
as the dust, that is played on by the wind. Oftentimes,
as he went along, the ready hand of our connoiseur,
transferred, with pliant power, the scenes which
enrapt his vision, in a skeleton form, to the surface of a
crumpled and dirty bit of vellum, which, with the tender
and assiduous care a mother strives to shield from harm
and hurt her sickly infant, Jost Stoll had made out to
preserve, amid the severest trials of his late adversities,
and whose motley visage presented a heterogeneous
mass of objects, mingled and confused, from the innumerable
subjects gathered by the avidious amateur, at
nearly every step. In the last instance, sometime before
young Leisler had advanced on his road, the ensign had,
for a better view, elevated himself on the very topmost
bar of a rough hewn fence of pine or cedar logs, which
kinds of wood, splitten on the spot where often they had
been felled and placed transversely, for the most part
formed the rude enclosures of the settler's cultivated
land, which did not, many times, exceed an half acre,
a patch chosen where the soil was richest and most free
from impediments of sterility; the earnest soldier sat
poised snug and secure, as apparently, on his narrow and
uncomfortable seat, with legs crossed, patiently, in support
of the object of his labour, and so avidious of the
satisfaction he mentally enjoyed, as scarce to perceive
the least inconvenience of a minor nature, when compared
to his pleasure. On his head, he had an aged hat,
slouched on one side, so as at once to give a knowing
and burlesque air to the countenance it enshadowed, being,
nevertheless, of itself, somewhat as rare a curiosity
as its wearer—for it showed, with rueful aspect, the sad
effect of time and long and faithful service, having neither
shape, manner, nor fashion, and being withal a
most woful spectacle of decrepitude, so perforated with
holes and cruel rents, as to resemble a keg riddled with
pistol balls: the plunderers had left him no weapon of
any sort, and his goodly rapier was absent from his sturdy
thigh—a shrunk and tattered mantle, and that which
may be termed an apology for a pair of galligaskins, so
tattered, torn and stained, that it would have puzzled the
shrewdest antiquarian, to have decided on its original
texture and form—finished his complement of garment,
or more properly speaking, his hangings; so strange and
wretched an appearance, did the once gay soldier present
from the robber's hand, that albeit, looking so very an
emblem of distress as he did, had he offered to stroll
the streets of Nieuw Amsterdam at noon day, he would
not alone risked the fretfulness of each snappish hound,
who, fattened at his master's feet, for very spleen, barks
at poverty, sickening at the sight, like the purse proud,
and the upstart—but he certainly would have run a fair
chance of an intimate acquaintance, by means of the friendly
intercession of Mass Garrit Abeel, the little waddling
Dutch overseer of the poor, with the stadt werkhuis, which
was the miniature counterpart of the famous one on the
Westperveld in the Low Countries, and was always kept
by a sufficient person, the office sometimes with others
being adjoined, that is, when there was no beggarly alderman
to hunger for the salary, as a kind of sinecure
to the mayoralty—his honour, the Schout, being also
commissioned coroner and clerk of the market. So entirely
was Jost Stoll engrossed in his occupation, the
matter of which might have been readily surmised
from his posture and glances, which last were now
quickly thrown towards the distant de Kolck and all its
mingled assemblage, and then with intense intention,
reverted to that which he had delineated, so he neither
seemed to hear nor see, or to be stirred by motion
or sound, within his immediate neighbourhood, while at
times, a smirk of inward gratification would move the
muscles of his face, as he triumphed in the success of
that on which he was employed; and ever and anon, with
strange grimace of peculiar admiration, he would twist
his head in one direction at first, and then in another, as
the sketch at which he so greedily worked, pleased his
steadfast taste and imagination. The ensign saw not the
startled look of the stripling, nor heard his first ejaculation
of surprise.

“How?—what—am I to believe my sight deceives
not?” exclaimed Arnyte after a short silence, wherein
he strove to recover his amazement at the unlooked for
rencounter, “art thou unharmed, safe from the savage
anger of the rover—safe—safe from the bloody knife of
murther—can such things happen? The ways of heaven
are indeed provident and merciful; seeing this, why
should I despair—is there no hope also for me?”

At this address of mixed astonishment and soliloquy,
the Ensign, with a peevish start of body, elevated his
brows, drew up the corners of his mouth in wrinkles, and
twisted in very pettishness the muscles of his visage, giving
at the same time a burlesque cast of ruefulness and dolour
to his whole countenance, like one who hath unawares
swallowed an unpleasant medicinal potion; but, nevertheless,
his face underwent this change of aspect from its
former placidity without his raising in the least his sight
from that which he was tracing (for to that his eyes were
held as enraptured) towards the person who accosted
him, nor did he in any wise alter either posture or attitude,
nor stirred he a limb, save an impatient drumming
of one of his feet against the log on which it rested, so
as to discontinue his genial task; but he the rather appeared
to ply thereat with increased and renewed determination,
and sooth he worked away with all the freshness
of effort wherewith an high spirited and indignant
stripling, having escaped from the restraining hands of
pacifying arbitrators, flies at his taunting adversary who

hath seemingly challenged a renewal of battle while his
opponent was withheld from the combat.

“Now by mine halidome! this is provoking—the road
ha? you've eyes—follow your nose; its long enough to
guide you—an't it damnable! detestable! forsooth, I meant,
—my dear fellow!” growled Jost Stoll, busily employed
while speaking, which was with the hasty manner of one
whose pleasure is abruptly and unceremoniously broken
upon by the hated voice of scholastic advice, or as though
an ill natured gnat had wound his buzzing pipe about his
ear and nose, in defiance of his fretful endeavour to drive
away the humming insect, and evidently mistaking Arnyte
for some troublesome passenger on the way, who
had made inquiry at him of the path, “Now by mine
troth! this would perplex a saint—my master, an you'd
use sight, you need not vex your neighbours thus: thy
unwise hurry hath drove me wrong in this outline;” he
went on, “faith, master, time's a beggar, and would
wrong one of a sketch that might honour Frans Mieris
or old Breugel. Hum! ha! Gad, I have it! I have
it!” continued he, suddenly changing his tone to exultation,
“by the hand of Carlo Maratti, that touch hath
given it new spirit—there's life! there's soul! it is nature's
self! Sir Godfrey would die of envy, did he see
this winter landscape o' mine—the putting on of that last
shade is inimitable! it improves the whole aspect from
its former state, making it like the master piece of De
Rhyn when compared to the insipid works of a Crayer,
Schut or Van Balen.” And having thus spoken aloud the
overflowings of his heart with unrestrained delight, the
Ensign pursued his occupation, apparently relapsed into
his former heedlessness of all around, and solely attentive
to that at which both heart and mind were at once enchained
in pleasant slavery; and indeed it was not until
after several repeated attempts, that young Leisler succeeded
in arousing the soldier from his infatuation, and
attracted his dormant curiosity, and then it was not until
he had explained his altered dress and appearance, and
by a relation of circumstances stamped his truth, that
the stripling was recognized as his fellow in the wigwam

by the marvelling Jost Stoll, who could scarce, in his joy
at the meeting, reconcile the chance that had so strangely
brought them again together—again and again he told the
tale of his sufferings, feeling as if in the repetition of each
incident he found a satisfaction; and in truth there is an
indescribable pleasure in telling those dangers we have
braved to such as we believe sympathize and rejoice with
us, that nearly repays for all that in the endurance hath
been borne, and this was felt by the honest ensign in the
highest degree, that for awhile he had nearly forgot his
sketch, though that was not long, for scarce had the
paroxysm past of his joy, ere he thrust on the examination
of the youth, and teased him with the explanation of
his labours; but the ensign, selfish as he was in this particular,
could not be blind to the obvious inattention of
his auditor to that which he exhibited, and though at
the first, he was somewhat irritated and offended, yet, on
remarking severely at Arnyte's neglect, as he looked in
the youth's face, he was struck with the settled sorrow
and despair that in his speaking visage was fearfully depicted.
The warm hearted amateur thrust his vellum in
his bosom, pocketed his pencil, and having gazed for a
minute in silence in his face, he questioned the stripling
in a voice soothing and inviting confidence, and with a
manner replete with persuasive kindness on the cause
of his apparent sorrow.

“For God's sake, my young master, what aileth thee?
quoth the ensign;—“thou lookest more like the picture
of a corse, than one whose only tint should be the bloom
of health—why, man, your countenance hath the bloodless,
heart-appalling hue which Rembrandt hath spread
over his painting of Belshazzer's vision of the hand-writing
on the wall—nay, cheer thee, my brave cavalier;
it is a friend that bids thee have comfort; give me thy
hand, youngster, and unbosom thy load of grief; mayhap
Jost Stoll may find a means to lighten that which now
seemeth to burthen thee so heavily.”

It had been a long time since one frank question, thus
dictated by the voice of friendship, had broke with a
consolatory effort on the bereaved and benumbed heart

of Arnyte; it was not the words, nor the manner which
Jost Stoll warmly grasped his hand, that unlocked, as
from a pent up stream, all the withered feelings of his
soul: but young Leisler saw, or deemed be read sincerity
in his companion's every look, and the thought,
that he had once risked his life for his rescue, though
unavailing, confirmed, as it were, faith in his sympathy;
for it is hard to believe that such as have been with us in
the hour of need and peril, and have shared its stress,
should be cold to us in our solitary woes; and the poor
soldier is struck deepest by denial, when he seeks alms
of a brother warrior.

As he rehearsed the doleful incidents of the ruin of his
family to his companion, the eyes of the stripling overran,
and tears as fast, as free, as rain drops from summer
clouds, fell on his cheeks; and the voice of his story
was tremulous, inarticulate and broken, although he
vainly strove for manly resolution; that firmness with
which he had fronted the court was fled in the presence
of one, before whom he deemed there was no need for
exercise of pride; albeit, the energy wherewith he had
borne himself was but as a cloak around a wounded
body, concealing for a time the terror of the heart, but
which at last is made known, by the bursting forth of
flooding gore.

“Now, by mine halidome!” cried the ensign, scarce
waiting to hear in patience the conclusion of the youth's
recital of misfortune, while as he spoke, his features
beamed with a glad smile of solace and resolution;—
“why, my master, art thou so wrapt,—so lost in the
depths of misery as to see no hope to catch at? art blind,
man, to mourn thus over irretrievable sorrow, when relief
is within a pallet's length of thy grasp;—why, thy case is
but like a gem of antiquity,—a rare painting, that from
age and ill usage, hath all its beauties obscured in darkness
and dirt; sooth, man, it only lacks the cunning hand of
the artist, and careful tendance, to bring forth in freshness
as when first laid on, the tints and colouring; for
you must know, that these in the old masters fly not like
in the works of our unskilful moderns—ay, the ancients

understood the art—why, what think ye?—I have seen
ensamples of Guido and Titian, and that wonderful colourist,
Tintoretto, that seemed as if but painted yesterday,
while there are Du Jardyn's heads that scarce last a
year but the white turns yellow—there's no keeping them;
age improves the old masters, but destroys the daubers
of our day;—but sooth, as the facts are, Mynheer Leisler,
it is well you have met me; for, perchance, you
might have fallen in the hands of some botching pretender,
who would have advised you as vilely as he would
mend a picture—gad! he'd laid on the varnish till the
canvass cracked in rags, and touched and tampered with
the lights and shadows, till all the sweetness of the
original was merged in his own filthy paint and clumsiness.
—Why, thou hast been blind as an ignorant critic,
examining a fine and finished group, who sees all faults
where there is nought but beauty; troth, man, why art
thou not at Sloughter's elbow? does he not owe thee a
life? and think ye he can have the heart to take thy
father's, or to stand calmly by, while the source of the
blood which was risked for his preservation is poured
out like mountain wine, to quench the thirst of any living
being?—no! with all his faults, Hal Sloughter can never
be capable of such ingratitude; he is, it is true, a sad fellow,
but could he do that,—after he hath seen thee, an he
suffers thy father's death,—by my halidome! I'll—I'll—
damn it, I'll paint a picture like Michael Angelo, and put
him among the damned;—come, we'll to his presence.
I've learned the Colonel hath his quarters at Mynheer
Bayard's, for the present, until the fort is fitted for his
reception. I've been seeking the place; they tell me it
is hereabout; so, let us on,—we have no time to spare
to the machinations of your father's enemies—though,
hum—ha,—I should like to finish my sketch; it will
scarce take a minute,—yet a minute may to your father's
fate now he hours.—I'll leave the thing; and if thereby
for ever I lose the opportunity of its perfect finish, it shall
remain like Buanarotti's famous head, drawn on the wall
with charcoal, in the idless of the moment,—a monument,
if not of power, at least of what Jost Stoll hath
sacrificed to the cause of humanity, so Mynheer Arnyte
Leisler—let us onward to the Bayard mansion.”

Having thus said, the Ensign seized the youth by the
arm and hurried him with rapid steps forward on the
road, and indeed what with the assured manner of his
companion, together with the words of Sloughter when
they separated after the escape from the blood-hounds of
the pursuing pirate, and which now with renewed strength
returned to his remembrance; there sprang forth in the
heretofore desolate breast of the stripling a confidence of
hope that before had not visited him in the darkness of
his miseries, and that claim which he had of a return of
benefit from the Governor grew in his thoughts of more
magnitude than he had ever supposed it—he had been
the saviour of the Colonel's life, thanks—eternal thanks,
had been vowed for the deed, and certainly his excellency
had been committed in honor, and by all that should be
held sacred between man and man;—yet at this last thought
the fearful Arnyte shuddered, for he had seen and learnt
of late how little, how weak, and easy to be rent and
trampled on were those holy bonds, and he well knew
how wide was the difference of granting and of asking a
return of favour and of gratitude; that too often the basis
of the request is forgotten and lost in a calculation of personal
interest, and the policy of that which is besought
stands for itself without a redeeming and collateral circumstance
to prompt a favourable assent—but the enthusiasm
and sanguine wishes of youth conquered all latent doubts,
and Arnyte rejected indignantly every harsh idea that
submitted itself against the good feelings of Governor
Sloughter.

“Yes, kind friend, thou advisest right—thank thee!
thank thee!” exclaimed the stripling rapidly, as mentally
he chided the laggard brain whose promptings had not
sooner presented the course to his imagination, and entering
into the intention of his companion he warmly pressed
the hand that held him in encouragement and support:
“yes, I'll to the presence of Sloughter—he cannot have
the feelings of humanity an he list not my supplication—
my tears shall wring his heart—my lamentations shall

pierce him through were he marble—ay, I will see him
though the accursed Bayard fence him from me with a
wall of iron—yes—yes—dear father, I have yet a chance
to preserve thee remaining—great God! how late the
thought—by one word—one precious thought, dull brain
hadst thou not been as dead, ere this how much misery
—what fruitless length of sorrow had been spared to me
and mine;”—and as with increased speed he urged his
associate on with the quick reflection of the moment, all
the self delusion of his young nature gathered power and
burst forth, accompanied with those hopes which had for a
time laid dormant, checked by the untimely frost of despair
—the blasted tree of life seemed renewed within him, and
once again blossomed bright and exuberant, as it were
nourished by the warm and secret fountain whose well-spring
lay hidden in the recesses of his heart, like a flower
that from the night and storm had but shrunk inward,
and as awakened from a honied sleep it opens its bosom
to the dew, and spreads around the perfumed fragrance
its closed leaves had held as it rejoices in the reviving
embrace of the sunbeam which it smiles to meet;—and yet
nevertheless amid this glimpse of light, a distant cloud at
times appeared at whose darkness when it crossed him a
sensation of rage and terror stole involuntarily through
him as though he gazed on the white crown of the basilisk,
the breath of whose vapour is pregnant with death,
and at the black idea, it took a moment's resolution to
regain his self possession; he had endured the very extremity
of anguish as his evil fortune, he had truly breasted
wretchedness and despair, he had drank of a draught as
bitter as the juice of the chamfered aloe leaf—the fearful
tenor of his fate could not be augmented in sorrow, it had
been but for him to smile at fresh malice from ungenerous
fortune, and he deemed he had been wound to that pitch of
frenzied bravery that the evil fate might heap on him, if it
destroyed, was welcome, and he would meet it withal as
the worn out and starved wretch who clings to the scatterling
of the wreck, as he awaits death greets the gathering of
the travado whose coming wings are to whelm him in destruction—but
this it seemed he scarce could bend his spirit
to perform, to pursue to its perfection the plan he had now
adopted of seeing Sloughter, he must perforce, in lowly
guise, a suppliant and humble beggar at the knee of
power, cross the threshold of the proud residence of the
inveterate Bayard, the foeman of his house. The idea
made his high heart swell within him, while every limb
trembled with agitation, at the very mention of the man
whose dark complottings had been so fatal to the name
of Leisler; and this, when breathed from the lips of
others, though ever present in his own breast, herded up
with a deep and seated trust for retribution, made his
eye flash, and flushed his cheek to fever; in truth, strong
was his reluctance to place a foot towards the dwelling,
that owned as master the deadliest enemy of his father's
life, even to seek its preservation. It was hard to see
the triumphant splendours of him whose untiring hate
had brought his unfortunate parent to the degradation,
and the chains he now bore and suffered, and to whose
never to be sated malice, most possibly, his blood was to
be shed as an oblation. Indeed Arnyte could not at
times, in this train of thought, disguise from himself that
it were not unlikely that should chance usher him in
the presence of that man, that, did not fortune prevail
as wont in Bayard's favour, and his arm was not unwithered,
though he fell for the deed, that the years of Bayard
would not save him from his fury; and it was
with difficulty, and the remembrance of the consequence
that might ensue to his father from so wild an
attempt, that he could quell his rebel feelings, which at
some moments wanted but the sight of his enemy to
have arisen to very madness. The need—the safety of
his father, prevailed—and he determined at length to
forbear all, and creep, for his sake, were it demanded,
to the dust that Bayard shook from his feet, so it led to
Sloughter's presence—so it assisted in preserving from
the axe, the venerated head of Jacobus Leisler.

A few minutes brisk walking, brought the ensign and
Arnyte to a noble and lordly avenue, on each side of
which rose a row of the lofty acacias, and here and
there in the line towered a mighty poplar, which, straight,

bare and limbless, was like the tall mast of some gallant
vessel. Having entered the avenue, and followed the
course it led for a considerable distance, the country rising
higher from the river, whose sight they had sometime
left behind, as they went along, passing small forests of
huge pine trees and hemlocks, through which the path
was carefully cut, and ever and anon, some wide field,
which bore the trace of clearance and culture, and
which in the summer, perhaps, glowed with rich burdens
of rye or wheat, they came at length to a neat
gateway, that opening on a large space of ground, in
which here and there was scattered an ancient sycamore,
that fronted the homestead of Nicholas Bayard—a
large, and somewhat imposing mansion, in which the
Dutch and English architecture and material was not
unadvantageously blended. The building was one of that
class of mansions, introduced early after the conquest of
the English on the island of Manahadoes, as the country
residences of the wealthy. Here and there, still remains
in the vicinity of the city, a solitary remnant of these
dwellings, with its wide porticoes, and massy balustrades
and huge halls, though their stable and century enduring
foundations are fast rooting up, to make way for the
more flimsy, yet fashionable villas of the upstart and
fantastic crowd, who disdain the homes of the gentry of
the olden day, which look as men who have outlived
their time—whose comates are withering in the grave,
while they endure, lonely and neglected, and worn with
age, and move among the throng of the young and the
gay, that have, as in an hour, sprung up around them,
filling the places of departed friends, with cold and
scornful looks, like melancholy spectres of departed time.
A soldier of the adelborst, with arms folded, supporting
his musquetoon, paced slowly backwards and forwards
in front of the house, announcing by his guard of honour,
that the mansion was the temporary residence of the governor
and commander in chief of the province of New-Yorke.
As the ensign and Arnyte approached the
dwelling, the soldier halted in his march, and fronted
their advance—and having drawn his pipe from his
mouth, with the luxury of which he appeared to be
wiling away the hour of duty, he for a moment stared
at them as they neared his post, with a suspicious survey,
ere, in a stern voice, he demanded their business,
and whom they wanted. To his questions, Jost Stoll
eagerly, and somewhat authoritatively, answered, that he
wished to see his excellency the governor—at the hearing
of which, instead of making way for him to pass, as
the ensign expected, the soldier, with an insulting and
insolent air and expression, laughing in mockery at his
ragged attire, bade him keep off and depart with his companion—stating
that colonel Sloughter was not free to be
seen by such vagabonds—and threatened, if they did
not instantly retire, that he should fire his gun upon
them—which, with bold audacity, he levelled, to put
such purpose in execution. It was in vain they endeavoured
to argue and prevail on the determination of the
man—he was still obdurate—he laughed at their anger,
and scorned their promises and persuasions, and, but for
the lucky and unexpected interference of an auxiliary, they
would have been forced to commit violence, to have passed
the fellow, or have given over as fruitless the attempt.
The person who came to their assistance, was a brisk
looking little old woman, who advanced from the door of
the mansion, apparently attracted by the noise and
voices of the contending parties. The clamorous outrage
of the soldier was in an instant stilled at the presence
of this personage, as before a superior, while his
opponents ceased their struggles in the curiosity of the
moment, somewhat stricken with the singularity of the
figure that was ushered before them—whose undulatory
and multitudinous form, in breadth, size and shape, might
have been compared with some truth to a Dutch fishing
dogger—for though wanting in height, the dame lacked
nothing in breadth, being as squab as a barrel—and to
her vast expansion of body, her dress made a considerable
addition—for her hips protruded plainly from the
compass of her voluminous attire, their swelling shape
increased by monstrous quiltings and gatherings of dress,
which were puckered up in numerous folds at her side,
A snow white mob cap, stiff and starched, with streaming
ribands and pointed lace, covered her head—her ears
were decorated with old fashioned golden ear-rings,
which depended down to her broad shoulders, and round
her neck she had a double string of beads, of yellow
amber, each one as large as a ripe cherry; about her
waist and shoulders, though low in the neck, she had a
kind of jacket of black velvet, worked with many coloured
silks, in flowers, and decorated with rows of multitudinous
little silver buttons, fastening in front with a huge
stomacher, and lacings above it, with bars and crossings of
gilt fillagree, and edgings of Flemish lace; her gown, or
rather petticoat, was of a stout woollen stuff, coloured
with alternate lines of red and blue, and short enough to
exhibit to advantage her warm knit, yarn stockings,
with their enormous yellow clocks; and her substantial
feet were comfortably encased in a strong pair of shoes
of lackered leather, with polished buckles. Every thing
about the dame's attire and appearance, was neat, tidy
and notable, and well comported with the dignity of her
station as housekeeper to colonel Nicholas Bayard;
and indeed of the authority derived from such situation,
she was not a little proud, nor was she one who was
accustomed to leniency in the exercise of such sway as
she attained therefrom. No—in sober truth, frau
Hyletje was one of that sort who wait not with deference
to the opinion of others, to set a true value on
themselves; and the good dame, though a short woman,
in earnest, was accustomed to hold her head mighty
high; nathless, vulgar sneers,—but these she set down as
from the source they came, the jealousy of the canaille,
or `konolye,' as she termed them, with ineffable scorn.

“Why, mensch Peterkin,” said the dame to the soldier,
“what in the name of wonder, is this clatter? who
and what are these, mensch Peterkin?” pursued the
frauw directing a sharp scrutiny towards the ensign and
Arnyte, and somewhat disappointed by the unfavourable
plight of the graphist's garments, “we can't have any konolye
about the house, mensch Peterkin.”

“I have forbid them the grounds, frau Hyletje,”

returned the alderbost respectfully, “but they care not
for civil words, and I am driven to force to learn them
manners.”

“Ay, mensch Peterkin, the konolye never know their
distance,” quoth the dame in return, “yet, mensch Peterkin,
it is not respectful before our doors, when his honour
and excellency dignifies the house with his presence
and visit,—it is not respectful, I say, as the tailor
said to his needle, when it pricked his thumb instead of
the cloth, that the entrance of a domicile of a respectable
burgher, should be disgraced by the clamour of
konolye—yet what can be expected from such persons,
as the goose said to the gander, when the ducks eat up
all the corn. I say, mensch Peterkin, this does not become
a decent and reputable family like ours, mensch
Peterkin!—And yet,” said the dame, somewhat mollified
in her precise and lofty notions, by the attractive appearance
of young Leisler, “the look of the younker is
not altogether so coarse, as the miller said to the grain,
when the wheel cracked and refused to grind. What's
your name and wish, Mienheer?—an't your name
Schermerhorne? I never saw such a likeness as there is
about your eyes, to the Schermerhorne family at Schenectadie;
the colour of your hair is just theirs, as the cat
said to the kitten, when she told her of the rat. In the
name of wonder, you must be Douw Schermerhorne—that
is, little Douw—he is the youngest of all the Schermerhornes.
Why child, how you've grown, as the crab said
to the mushroom. How's aunt Elbertje? is sister Janetje
married yet? what's become of her old spark,
Gardt Van Wee? you don't know I am a relation to the
Schermerhornes. I'll tell you all about it, as the salmon
said to the flounder, after she had escaped the hook
with the bait. My second cousin, Winant Van Zandt,
married the sister of Bolee Van Wagenen, who was the
step daughter of Ostheim Van Dolen—no konolye, I
can let you know—but ugh! ugh!”—

The frau had got this length in her dissertation,
when a fit of coughing seized her, and gave a moment's
respite to her hearers, who, from her positive and rapid

manner of utterance, were not able either to explain
themselves to her, or even get in a word edgeways, she
having the whole field to herself. With more success
than heretofore, Arnyte seized the opportunity, and
freely discovered his name and situation, and his desire
and object in seeing the governor; and although a retainer
of his enemy, he besought the dame's compassion
to afford him a chance to save his father's life, by an interview
with colonel Sloughter. Frau Hyletje was
somewhat startled at this appeal, and although apparently
fearful and indecisive, her feelings were evidently enlisted
in favour of the stripling, whose suit was warmly
backed by his anxious companion.

“By mine halidome,” quoth the generous hearted
ensign, “though this grumbling watch-dog growls at me
now, and forgets that like me, the great Salvator must
have made a ragged subject, when he left the Apulian
robbers—an I see Hal Sloughter, by mine troth, I'll
make him change his tints—and 'faith, fair dame, an you
conduct us to him, I'll paint your picture—you'll make
a noble head, and shall vie with Titian's daughter, Rembrandt's
wife, and D'Urbino's mistress.”

“You're one of the Leisler family,” said frau Hyletje
in reply to Arnyte, “what a pretty set of konolye you've
all made of yourselves—a fine stew your father has put
the province in, as the cook said to the frying-pan—you
are the youngest an't you—your father has had but two children
has he—a girl, she married Jacobus Milbourne, and
a boy that's you an't it—why you are the image of your
mother—you look as like as two peas, as the farmer said
to his pigs—only to think now how you have grown out
one's recollection—why I was at your christening—it
seems like yesterday—and a rare frolic there was—the
waits played before your father's door all night, and the
slaves beat the bonjo lustily the whole day—and then
what a feast there was, it done one good only to look at it,
as the fox said to the chickens when he found the wall too
high for him to leap—why your mother was one of the
Van Alstynes—a reputable family—no konolye among
them—they belonged to Poghkeepsing and were some

way connected to the Livingstons of the manor—well
you have got into a sad dish, as the scullion said to his
mate when the cat ran away with the meats, and you
need not tell me your story child, I know all about it—
bad enough it is in all conscience—your father's just sure
to be hanged child, so take comfort, for such things can't be
helped, as the doctor said to the sick man, when he found
he would die in spite of his medicine, what can't be cured
must be endured, is a wise saw that you must take profit
by—so take comfort child—take comfort:”—and the
garralous dame indulged herself in this desultory gossip,
unmeaningly wounding where she thought to succour her
hearers, who found it in vain to breast the torrent of her
words, and it was not literally until her breath gave out
for the time that Arnyte was able again to exert himself
to interest her in affording him facility towards attaining
the object at which he was now bent—at last with some
difficulty he gained her consent, though she observed
when expressing it, her fears that she was acting unadvisedly
to introduce him to the chamber of the governor.

“But Colonel Sloughter is a fine man—a real gentleman,
nothing konolye about him whatever,” said the dame,
as she led them in the house, “there's something one can
see at once about a true cavalier and a great man, as the
crab said to the whale—why there's no more pretension
about his excellence than there is about me—he talks as
familiar to me as if we had known each other for years,
let alone he is their majesties' governor general of the
province—but then there's some inducement to his honor's
condescension towards me—there never was any
thing konolye about me or mine—which is more than
many people can say—no Larry Van Schawachofer of
the Brill who was my great grandfather was a reputable
burgher as any in the Vaderlandts, gainsay him who
may, and then let the worst come to the worst, as the
butcher said to the ox when he snapt the rope that bound
him, if my giving you any means of access to his honor
should anger his excellence or Mienheer Bayard—though
child I can't see the harm in it, as the monkey said to the
looking-glass—and it's no more than right you should strive

for your father, as bad a man as Jacobus Leisler is, and as
much as he deserves to be hung child—for though—take
comfort child—I assure you I have no hopes of your success
in saving Mienheer Leisler—for though I say, you do
not save him child—and I get in trouble by doing what I do,
as the thief said to his booty when he robbed its owner—yet
child I will have some consolation in knowing I assisted you
in your afflictions, and poor infirm creatures like we mortals
are, child, as the dominie said, should—You'll find his excellence
in that chamber child—be of good heart—though I
am certain it's of no use your trying, you can't possibly
succeed, as the frying-pan said to the eel as he strove to
leap out—I leave you here at the door, you'll find his honor
very sociable—there's nothing konoyle about him
child.”

Frau Hyletje, after entering the door of the mansion,
preceded Arnyte and Jost Stoll to the upper end of a huge
and low roofed hall, whose sides and pannels of dark oak,
gave it a sombre and gloomy aspect; there she abruptly
paused at the half opened entrance of a room, in which,
as her speech had indicated, Colonel Sloughter was to be
found, and with that which she deemed words of assurance
at parting, she hastily left them to make such
way themselves across the threshold of the Governor's
apartment as they were best able,—and it appeared as if
in the very accomplishment of her kind action towards
Arnyte, by her fearful and precipitate manner of departure,
that fran Hyletje, in spite of her words, repented
and failed in heart as she approached near to the personage
whose anger her officiousness in introducing unwished
for suitors, as might be supposed, would arouse, and the
tenor of her speech did not disguise from her hearers her
timidity on this point so as to induce them to care to arrest
her retreating steps. The advantage of the situation
where they were left by frau Hyletje, and the partly unclosed
door of the apartment, discovered to Arnyte and
his companion the interior and its inmates, by whom they
were as yet unnoticed and unperceived in the earnestness
of their engagement. The room was an old fashioned,
low locust wainscoted chamber, with heavy shelved fire
place, dark and polished with outpourings of the smoke, the

hearth and chimney jambs were of decorated and ingeniously
inlaid Dutch-china tiles, on whose visage the
brightness of the fire glittered sparklingly, and the shooting
and brilliant flame was reflected as on the surface of
a mirror; above the fire place hung black, soiled and
scarce distinguishable from age, neglect, and the ascending
vapours of the smoke, a painting of the Flemish school,
which instantly attracted the eye of Jost Stoll, whose
whole attention was enwrapt in its examination the moment
it caught his sight, so as to be utterly regardless, as
wont, of time, place, or situation, and every object about
him,—the apartment otherwise was rather cumberously
than sumptuously furnished: huge satyr legged tables,
monstrous chairs, with damask cushions and feet of lions'
claws, and other articles equally unwieldy and sumptuously
ornamented, the glass and picture frames being
formed by twisted ribbons, serpents, rose stalks, leaves,
and flowers, all entwining in gilt, according to the taste of
the time; indeed, the house of Mynheer Bayard, and its
internal arrangement and decorations assorted much with
his political feelings, having less traces of the Dutch than
assimilation towards the innovation of the fashions of the
English aristocracy of the time, as far as the intercouse
and means of importation of their splendour would permit
the distant colonist to enjoy. Sloughter, somewhat
neglectfully attired, with looks flushed and disturbed, was
standing by a table, over which bundles of parchment and
papers were carelessly strewn, while Nicholas Bayard,
his host, was at his side, holding in his hand a roll of vellum,
and apparently earnestly addressing the Governor,
who seemed to listen to his words peevish and impatient;
the broken sentence which struck the ear of Arnyte as
he advanced to enter the chamber, thrilled through him,
and made him pause for the instant with breathless solicitude
to listen to their converse.

“But Colonel Sloughter,” Bayard was saying, as in
conclusion of what might have been an expostulation and
argument to enforce the Governor's performance of that
which he was in some wise averse, and using in his manner
of speech that candour of utterance and argument as

if from the lips of friendship, to induce Sloughter's compliance
with the matter, “but Colonel Sloughter,” quoth
Nicholas Bayard, “the Council have already negatived
the frivolous plea of the criminal; the court hath passed
sentence of death, such as the law hath dictated to them;
the warrant for his execution hath been drawn out—I
hold it in my hand—You cannot, permit me, Sir, to remind
you, refuse that which is your duty, and perfect by
your signature this instrument which seals the peace of
this province! What, Sir, will the world, the people say
to this strange aversion to fulfil the sentence of the law?
the court hath decided, the Council have accorded that
he hath done the deed of a rebel and a traitor, and must
die the death—”

“Let me tell you Colonel Bayard,” suddenly interrupted
Sloughter, and pacing the room with an abrupt step
and irritated air—“by mine honour let me tell you Colonel
Bayard, I am no boy to be led in leading strings, by
the Council or Court, or by living man—you have been
over zealous Sir, over hasty in this matter—you have
taken me unawares Sir,—I had no idea that things had
been hurried to this last stage;—that I feel hostile, yea,
condemn this man Leisler—that he deserves punishment,
exemplary punishment, no man is more willing than I am to
accord—but I will not be dictated to, this looks like dictation;
all here hath been too precipitate—last night the trial,
and at its heels, within an hour, the Council awards its
sanction—that scarce breathed, ere I am demanded to sign
the warrant for the execution of a severe and desolating
sentence, a sentence which once put in force, there can
come no after repentance;—Colonel Bayard I am a soldier,
and have in the heat of contest, in the fiery throng
of battle seen gore—life gore run like water—but albeit I
must confess I shudder at taking a man's existence,—at
quenching in cool blood the lamp of life—nathless your
forms and trickeries of law—without first having good and
mature consideration on the step ere I take it;—I do also
remember me Colonel Bayard my own life within a day
was in the hands of others, I therefore lack not feeling
for a sufferer, albeit different in situation, though like

exposed—I will not be rash Sir, there shall be no speedy
work, things shall be reflected on—and as for the people
Sir,—what are the people, you yourself have decried
them—beasts of burthen, hounds that must obey the beck
of their masters; they shall not dictate, Colonel Bayard,
my course, I am sufficient judge I hope of right or wrong
without their gainsay.”

“Your exellencie most assurely looketh on the business
erroneously,” returned Bayard in a soothing tone of
voice, “it hath never been the part, act, or intention of
the court that tried Jacobus Leisler—or your faithful
counsel in performing the severe duty assigned them in
the same—nor, speaking honestly Colonel Sloughter hath
it been, or is it the design of Nicholas Bayard your firm
well wisher to point out for ill, or enforce your adoption
of any course—this we leave most respectfully to your
better judgment—but that it well becomes us, our stations,
our allegiance to their sacred majesties as most dutiful and
loyal subjects, who, in our hearts, abhor and detest all the
rebellious, arbitrary, and illegal proceedings of the late
usurpers of their majesties' authority over this province;
who, from the bottom of our hearts, I repeat, with all integrity
acknowledge and declare that there are none that can
or ought to have right to rule or govern their majesties'
subjects here in New-Yorke, but by their majesties' proper
commission and authority, which is now placed in your
excellency. Under these pure feelings, we are enspirited
to advise, to suggest, and I will assert it, Colonel
Sloughter, to urge that which we in faith believe is sound
policy, and best conducive to the conservation of the
tranquillity of the inhabitants of this colony; and if, I say,
your excellency, any of us, in the pursuance of this laudable
endeavour, have been too pertinacious, or rather
frankly speaking, for that way I interpret your words,
Colonel Sloughter,—if the honest and anxious zeal of
Nicholas Bayard hath been miscontrued, and from my exertions
for the public weal, unfavourable impressions
have visited your excellency's mind, I do make bold to
say that my earnest desire, my strenuous wish for your
excellency's welfare, and of their majesties' dominions in

America, hath alone been the cause, these have o'erleapt
discretion—a plain man like me, your excellency,
knows not the art to control his honest feelings; for I
will not disguise it, Sir, the death of Jacobus Leisler is,
in my poor opinion, sought at your hands an expiatory offering,
not alone to the magnitude of his crime, but at
once as a terrible ensample to his secret and unsubdued
partizans, who remain hidden in the core of the multitude,
and moreover, to the wishes, hopes, and offended
feelings of the well affected, and this must be immediate:
for permit me to remind you, that delays breed obstacles
as well as dangers, which, to one who so well knows
the fickle nature of the people with whom you have to
deal as I do, and of whose violence and madness of excitement
in the massacre of the traitor Milbourne, your excellency
hath a stern specimen,—may ground some fears
that, an public justice be not straightforth satisfied, disturbances,
that will give no slight trouble to quell, may
arise; and your excellency's knowledge of mankind, I
doubt not, hath taught you ere now, that in such times of
civil commotion, the lives, properties, nay, sir, both friend
and foe are at peril. I beseech your excellency to pause
and reflect on the convulsed state of this province, ere,
by an undue leniency, or may I without offence so term
it, for want of an instantaneous firmness of action, the unhappy
citizens of New-Yorke are thrown back into that
terrific state of disorder, wherefrom, I was flattering myself,
the benignant presence of your excellency was extricating
them.”

To the first part of this exhortation of Bayard, the
Governor listened fretfully and unwillingly, as one who
hears an argument which is at discord with his own opinions;
but ere the speaker had finished, his uneasy air and
broken gait, as he measured the length of the apartment
with pensive strides, marked the force of the impressions
which he received from the insidious foeman of the suffering
Leisler—Sloughter heard his counsellor through,
and then stood with hand raised to his thoughtful brow,
motionless and silent for a time, while Bayard, as if he

read the conflict of his mind, with a keen yet exulting
look regarded his deliberations.

“Colonel Bayard, it is not for me to deny that what
you advance is not of moment,” said the Governor at
length, though the hesitation and decision of his mind
were perceptible in his manner, “yet, my friend, I cannot
rid me of an inclination to delay the last and violent
step you advise; it certainly doth strike me at once as
dangerous as well as impolitic, and these promptings I
have not the resolution to subdue, to cut off a man, who
like Leisler, (for this, nathless later misdeeds, must be
allowed him in all praise,) hath so vigorously and early
appeared for William of Orange, and whose conduct hath
so signally contributed to the revolution; and I would
have you remember, I have others besides the people of
this province to account to for my actions—I have doubts,
sir, how a deed of so bloody a cast as that suggested will
be received at Whitehall.”

“In my poor judgment, what your excellency hath
thrown out, though natural, are unfounded fears, if without
offence I may apply the term on the matter in question,”
eagerly responded Nicholas Bayard, perceiving
the advantage he was fast gaining over the wavering
mind of the governor, “and I think the least reflection
on the part of one, whose discrimination is usually so just
and clear on most subjects, will at once convince your
excellency's latent doubts that what I argue is strictly
right and unanswerable. I apprehend, that whatever
hesitation your excellency labours under, on such points
as your excellency has been pleased to mention, can be
satisfied; for let me ask your excellency, whether a man,
who having preserved another from death, murthers afterwards
the object of such charity, deserves or ought to escape
the liability of the law for the life he takes, forsooth,
because at first, at imminent hazards, he saved that very
life which later he destroys; again, I would seek at your
excellency what favour of gratitude doth one deserve who
having bestowed inadvertently a great benefit on his fellow,
no sooner discovers its worth, than he robs him

thereof—is not this Leisler's case? but I will go on and
put the fact to conviction: what doth he merit, who, for
his own ambition strikes off the shackles with which a
tyrant binds his serfs, and who no sooner hath attained
his conquest than he seeks, base born as he is, to fill that
fallen tyrant's place? Yes, your excellency, what hath
Leisler done but enacted the part of a faithful subject
that he might the better play the rebel and the traitor?
shall a man who commits a crime, for the deceptive
and superficial show of a former day, escape legal
punishment? Shall a highwayman plead that in the days
of his virtue he gave charity? Your excellency's good
sense (with due submission) must coincide with my assertion,
that such a criminal should be an ensample to the
world, to show how just the punishment for an aberration
from virtue—but the actions of Jacobus Leisler
have not been such as to offer themselves in mitigation
of his sentence—your excellency, the province is convinced
of the magnitude of his guilt, and the righteousness
of a severe and exemplary punishment—and as for
the feelings at Court—as for the reception of his death
at Whitehall—what friends—what mourners can a convicted
traitor—a hardened rebel have in the hallowed
circle of their sacred majesties—God keep all such from
their presence—besides, can any one be averse to the
true administration of justice—can any man regret or be
offended at the sentence of a just and impartial Court—
no your excellency, the traitor Jacobus Leisler has been
condemned by the law of the land, and whatever blame
should come, must fall on that law—you made it not—
neither did you try the criminal—but you fulfil by signing
his death-warrant, the high and imperious dictates
that the law hath awarded your station; I am bold to say
it Sir, you fulfil your duty only by the act—your excellency
may as well refuse the death of a robber, a pirate, a
murtherer, as to stand between the appointed sentence
of the law and a convicted traitor.”

The irresolution of Governor Sloughter sank before
the forceful earnestness and perseverance of the cold
hearted Bayard, he unfolded slowly his arms, and raised

his head from the meditative posture in which it had reclined
on his breast, and there was a slight and tremulous
movement of his under lip as he compressed it inward,
and his brows contracted themselves in the sternness of
determination, as his reluctance momently gave way and
yielded to the warmth of representation by which he was
pressed—the weakness of Colonel Sloughter was evident,
and well did the wily Bayard know the chord of mastery to
work on—for while he paraded forth his respect and submission,
he in fact governed him whose commands he appeared
to worship as a servile slave: for at the same time by
the guileful manner wherewith he pronounced his sentiments
and enforced his arguments for Leisler's execution,
he flattered the selfish pride of a vain man—quick, irritable
and alive to that he deemed detractive either to his independence
of opinion or authority—as in the advancement
of his reasons he seemed alone to appeal to the
sagacity and discretion of him whom he addressed, as if in
the perception of each fact he used, the hearer had preceded
the speaker, and as from that which he asserted
common sense and experience could not deteriorate—he
also lulled in slumber all the political apprehensions of
personal consequences which deterred the accedence of
the governor to the act he sought his completion—and
moreover by a cunning show of disinterested honesty—an
ardent desire for the welfare as well as the credit of his
government, to which the most imbecile ruler is awake;
he finally succeeded in bending Colonel Sloughter to his
will—thus it is that the credulous, unwary, and weak
minded when they least suspect it, when most boastful of
their freedom are in the thraldom, and dwindle down into
the passive tool of vile and designing knaves—and by
surrendering heedlessly, and without due caution the impulses
of their own generous hearts to the fine spun sophistry
invented for their deception; from their characters
or stations the opprobrium of villanies, whose benefit
they reap not fall on their heads, while their directors
and advisers covered and in secret escape pursuit, and
banquet on the spoil, to gain which they have dared no
danger—receiving the advantages of another's blinded
folly—Bayard eagerly snatched a pen from the standish
that stood near, and thrusting it with an air that even
controlled as it was by policy and art, bespoke anticipated
trumph, and interest in the event of a personal nature,
in the pliant hand of the governor which had been
partially lifted to receive it, he officiously unrolled the
warrant and spread it out before Colonel Sloughter to
receive his signature.

“Colonel Bayard, I owe this man Leisler, however
affected by his imprudence, no animosity; I am moved
by no resentment of a personal nature whatever. In
placing my name to the warrant for his execution, I
would have it understood, I perform an act rendered necessary,
by the event of his trial. It is an approval of
the court I can neither avoid nor withhold, as being
honoured by their majesties' commission over this province;
and albeit, I can find no room for the exercise of
mercy, considering the enormity of guilt committed by
the unfortunate wretch—for his crime hath truly placed
his blood on his own head.”

As the governor expressed these words, he approached
the open warrant, and leaned over it as about to commence
the writing, which was to seal for ever the fate of
his fallen predecessor.

“Hold, colonel Sloughter, an instant, forbear the
fearful deed that takes his life—while thus clasping your
knees, I supplicate you to spare my father.” And as
he spoke, Arnyte rushed breathless into the apartment,
and cast himself at the governor's feet.

“By mine halidome, that is by an old master,—I'll
wager it is from the brush of Huysum,—I know it by
the stiffness of his grouping,” exclaimed Jost Stoll, as he
followed the steps of young Leisler, his attention evidently
as much rivetted to the picture, which had first
engaged his sight, as either by the presence of the governor,
or that which was stirring in the scene, “troth,
your excellence, I greet ye from my heart:—by the by,
who painted that? the figures are not bad—a little
rough, though—by the glory of Sir Godfrey, there are
no mean touches about the piece.”

“Heaven and earth! what do I behold—my brave
deliverer—ensign Jost Stoll alive—are miracles rife?”
ejaculated the governor simultaneously with their entrance.

Language can scarce realize the startled and amazed
looks of the inmates of that room, at this most unexpected
and undreamed of interruption, at a moment so interesting
and important, and when to the accordance of
the wishes of his political foeman, the blood of Leisler
was about to be yielded irrevocably. Marvel and ire
were blended in the visage and action of Bayard, whose
every feature scowled in malignancy, at the intrusion.
The unused pen dropped from the palsied fingers of
Sloughter, as he turned his eyes on the youth and his
companion in alternate wonder and alarm, gazing on
each, as in the lapses of a vision, while his eye ran over
their persons as one that scans a thing, scarce reconciled
to the mind as real, or as beings given up from the grave
or dropped from some bursting of a stormy cloud;—an
instant's glance served for recognition—but the governor's
gaze rested last and longest, reverting from the
well known countenance of the ensign, which it had met
pleased and astonished, to the haggard and care worn
lineaments of the stripling—while the attitude in which
the youth had prostrated himself in humbleness and
misery, had his words, his piercing and grief-like tones,
been unheard, could not be misconstrued; they struck
to the soul of Sloughter—they shot in his ears like bolts
of burning iron, and for the moment's breath, his blood
flowed backward to his heart, leaving him pale as death,
and then, sudden as their retreat, the hot fountains of
his veins swelled upwards to his crimsoned cheeks.

“What, thou the son of Leisler—doth sense or hearing
mock me?” muttered he in a faint accent of surprise
and agitation, and he paused for a moment, like
one who strives to recover from the stunning force of a
thunder shock, ere he continued—“brave and noble
youth,” pursued he, “this should not be—it doth shame
me greatly, to see thee thus:—it is not for him who
saved my life, at my knee thus in lowliness to seek his

suit; come, my preserver, to my bosom—the place next
to my heart, thou deservest to fill—to my arms, sir—
prithee, rise to my heart!” And with a caress of kindness,
he endeavoured to lift the stripling from his humble
posture.”

“Nay, nay, your excellency doth yourself wrong,”
quoth Arnyte, repelling his attempt with animation, “I
come not here your creditor nor your equal—but as the
son of a condemned man; I am the wretched child of
the forlorn and unfortunate Jacobus Leisler; of him,
whose miserable destruction you were but now about to
consummate; by all that earth and heaven holds sacred,
I do conjure, implore and pray you, not to sign, not to
touch that horrid and bloody instrument—for God's sake,
sign it not, but spare, oh, spare the life of my poor father.”
And as he spoke, he clung to the governor in
the wild agony of passionate entreaty, while his eyes,
with a tearful and piteous expression of pleading, were
raised to the countenance of Sloughter, who, undetermined,
yet shaken, listened to the beseechings of the
stripling, his aspect disturbed, and his frame trembling
with palpable emotion.

Bayard having rallied his amazement at young Leisler's
presence, and harassed with fearful forebodings as
to its evident effect on Sloughter, in which he already beheld
the downfal and disappointment of his hopes, now
advanced, and prepared to interpose himself before the
influence of the petitioner.

“Young man,” quoth he, with affected feeling, placing
as he spoke, his hand gently on the youth's shoulder, as
with intent to assist him in kindness from his suppliant
position, “your own sense must make you aware how
unavailing under the present circumstances, is this conduct;
you are exhausting your strength and nerves to
no purport whatever, except at once cruelly lacerating and
rending the tender heart of his excellency. I speak for him,
Mienheer Leisler—I would wish to spare him the regret
and sorrow of denial to you, to whom he acknowledges such
obligation; he hath the sympathy of a man for your situation;
his heart, as you cannot but be convinced of,

bleeds for you at every pore; but stern needcessity—the
duty enjoined on him—the high place which he fills,
hath made him the dispenser of the law—and it behooves
not to commingle therewith, ought personal—and
were it his own, nathless your father, he could not—nay
boy, he dare not for his conscience—for his honor's sake
—grant more than his commiseration for the unhappy
man.

The voice of Bayard was nervous and emphatic in its
tone, and with a stern and meaning look as he uttered his
words he perused the features of the Governor, wherein
were painted the conflicting struggles of his soul, paramount
in which his failing resolution could be read—
Sloughter seemed to shrink before the fixed gaze of Bayard
as conscious of his weakness, and almost like a
school-boy humbled before the haughty frown of his domineering
preceptor; he noted the latter sentence uttered
by Bayard, who plainly by his manner appeared rather as
if he addressed them to Colonel Sloughter's attention
than to the stripling.

When Arnyte felt the touch of the mortal foe of his
name, his very flesh seemed to quiver and shrunk from
the grasp, as if the hand whose weight was on him bore
contagion to his blood; while his cheek grew to a livid
hue, and he drew his breath long, heavily, and thick between
his clenched teeth, and his eyes sparkled in deep
rage as he scanned the living lineaments of rooted hate;
“I asked not of thee, Colonel Bayard, to back my suit,”
retorted the youth, quickly turning on the unwelcome and
unfriendly intermeddler; his voice sharp with sarcastic
anger, and his fiery spirit darting from his speaking visage
as it would have withered his adversary; “a son of
the house of Leisler could expect no favour from such
as thee, it might as well be demanded of the treacherous
tiger to surrender from the gripe of his merciless jaws the
fresh slain victim, ere he had glutted his ruthless appetite
on a drop of the gore; or the fierce and ravenous vulture
to yield a morsel of the flesh that its beak hath
stripped from the carcass of the dead, as to suppose that
Nicholas Bayard would aid in preserving the life of Jacobus
Leisler: no, Mienheer” continued Arnyte severely,

“the rather when the scaffold is prepared, be you ready
at hand with axe and cord, lest the stout heart of the
executioner fail him in that awful hour of need, and that
you may make your work sure—”

Arnyte paused awhile as he me with calm and bold front
the grim smile of unutterable malice that passed over the
face of his opponent, as he relaxed the hold he had taken
upon the garment of the youth—Bayard drew himself back
with high and lofty motion, while his eye lowered in dark,
quenchless, and insatiate ire upon the offender, like the
arrowy fire of a gloomy cloud that darts from the black
and stormy heaven towards the palaces of earth as eager
for destruction.

“Nay Colonel Bayard it is not meet that you restrain
Mienheer Leisler,” quoth the Governor, “it surely
becomes me to hear the young man ere I decide on
his application, or his father's death, it is just, it is
fair, Colonel Bayard!” Bayard answered only with a bitter
sneer, and Arnyte turned towards the Governor:
“Be ye not deaf of ear and of heart, and ye will hear me
with compassion,” he said, the high tone wherewith he
had attacked Bayard changing to one of almost womanish
lamentation, “yes, it is thy feet Colonel Sloughter I embrace—it
is to you I lift my hands in suppliance in affliction,
for thou hast the power and can save him,” and he
clasped his hands in the strenuousness of his solicitation,
“spare, oh spare” he wildly cried, “my father's life!”—
The Governor in silence covered his face to conceal his
agitation: “Spare the life of Jacobus Leisler,” the youth
continued, “I ask it at your hands, not by the memory of
such services as I may have rendered you in extremity
—not by the blood which as water I would have poured
out to shield you from the poniard of the assassin—but I
seek it from your mercy, from your humanity—whatever
have been his crimes for which he deserves to suffer,
though a parent is never guilty in the eyes of his child,
yet far be it from me now to dispute them—yet, oh I entreat
let not his evil deeds be heard, blot them out from
the calendar of his days and spare him—I beg it of you
by the love you have borne to the protectors of your own

infancy—by your regard for your own parents in days gone
by—by the thousand ties that bound you to them while
living—by your reverence for them in death—by the
dust of their graves—I pray you spare him, he is my
parent; make not our home a place of desolation, widow
not my mother, have mercy on him who now begs it from
you—oh! you have never had the heart of a son an you
refuse me, an you deny, you never could have received
or known the fond and tender blandishments, the multitudinous
cares that link the parent and his offspring, or
you could not hear in vain the voice of a son who pleads for
his father's life—oh! there is a sacredness in the very
name of a parent, that will make it sacrilege to harm a
single hair of his revered head—oh! forbear, forbear the
horrid death you have marked out for him: let him not
die the death of infamy; expose him not to the heartless
scorn of an infuriated rabble, who will but mock his
agonies—your heartstrings must be insensible and bloodless,
your eyes stone an they can look on the suffering ye
have doomed him to, and not be blasted; bethink you
yet but a little while, a few circling years death will
claim his own, the sorrows he hath seen will bow him to
the grave—cut not short by violence his brief span of
years, and far from this land of wo in poverty, in exile,
our prayers, our blessings shall stream up in incense to
thee—oh! spare him, spare him from the scaffold;—it is
hard to endure the thought of parting, when the course
of age in its infirmity brings the hoary headed man unto
the last resting place of mortality—but that death of
blood and crime—that fearful death—it will madden me
—oh God have mercy—oh spare his precious life!—I
call on you Colonel Sloughter by your solemn promise in
the hour of gratitude—plighted in the sight of heaven and
of earth—the words are wrought on my heart—remember
that pledge—when you refused what I might ask,
though it were that which you might not well do—yet if
you refused it, you called on the face of heaven which
had then so smiled upon you, to be turned for ever from
your fortunes—I ask the life of Jacobus Leisler at your
lips—spare, oh spare my father's life!”

Sloughter could no longer suppress the emotion that
shook his frame in violence, beyond all caution;-prudence,
former determination, and every feeling of hereafter consequence,
were lost in the sight of the suppliant before
him.

“He shall not die! he shall not die!” exclaimed the
Governor, in an almost involuntary ejaculation.

This annunciation struck Arnyte with an almost electric
power—it came on his ear with a stunning force—he
heard the words that proclaimed safety to his father at
first in breathless amazement, as if he could scarce be
assured of the reality of the sound, even while he listened,
or as though he had not understood that which had been
said; nor when the lips of the Governor closed was his
stupor broken; for he stirred not eye nor limb, and he
stood for the time as one frozen in an attitude of attention;
yet this lasted not, for suddenly his eyes rolled in
wild exultation, and with a passionate burst of joy, he
struggled to press the hand of the governor to his quivering
lips.

“Thou hast said it!” he cried, rejoicingly, “he shall
not die! he shall not die!”

The strength of the stripling, exhausted by repeated
exertions, could support him no longer; for the sudden
fulfilment of hope,—the reception of good and evil are
oftentimes attended with similar effects, and madness hath
been caused by both, so nearly allied are the emotions of
happiness and sorrow;—all that had upheld Arnyte in the
misery he had passed through, now apparently deserted
him with the abrupt turn of fortune, and as he uttered
the last words in a strain of almost incoherent rapture, he
contended for an instant against the excess of agitation
which seemed nearly to choak him; but his endeavour
was fruitless, and a wild and hysteric passion of tears and
of laughter, started from his lips, ere he dropt down at
the feet of Sloughter in a paroxysm of death-like insensibility.

Help! Colonel Bayard, Jost Stoll, help! for God's
sake! the boy is dying! help to bear him in the air!”

exclaimed the governor in alarm, as he dragged the
senseless youth towards the window of the apartment.

Bayard answered the call with slow and reluctant step,
apparently unmoved by the fearful situation of young
Leisler, and as though wishing the worst might happen
ere his interference. Not so Jost Stoll; the Ensign, as
he beheld the stripling fall to the earth, dashed from his
hand the pencil that it held, and the now neglected death-warrant,
which, in the mania of the moment, with utter
indifference as to the consequence, and it would have
been the same with a paper of even more importance,
he had snatched up and was transferring on its surface,
where there was a blank to be found, the leading traits of
that which was passing before his eyes, with his usual exclamations
of delight at the varied attitudes and passions
of the living group he was drawing; an observer, unattended
to by the more interested actors; but when he
marked the fading colour of Arnyte's countenance, every
other consideration vanished, and he threw from him all
incumbrances, and rushed in haste to the stripling's assistance.
Young Leisler was lifted forward between Jost
Stoll and Colonel Sloughter, while Bayard, as loathing
the object of their care, with slow hand, threw back the
casement and admitted the breeze to enter the chamber
freely; and while its refreshing coolness scattered his
disordered locks upon his scarce throbbing temples, his
supporters chafed his white and pallid brow, and rubbed
to warmth his blood deserted hands. An interval of almost
breathless expectation and incertitude passed, ere
their utmost endeavours were able to recall a sign of reanimation,
and they had nearly despaired of success in
their anxious attempts, ere the reviving hue of life revisited
and mingled its faint tinge on the colourless cheek
of the stripling, and the first prognostication of returning
consciousness, showed itself in a slight tremour that
passed over his features;—and then followed and became
perceptible a quick, short respiration, like that of a sleeping
infant, while a faint spark of intelligence emanated
through the shadows of his long dark eye lashes, whose

drooping lids slowly unclosed as from a dead sleep, and
there broke a sudden, low, and scarce articulate sound,
like the dying murmur of a distant echo, from his parted
lips, which were fast empurpled with the rush of blood.

“By mine halidome,” quoth Jost Stoll, his accustomed
disposition again resuming its power in the assurance
of the moment, as his fears, which had been
strongly excited for the recovery of the youth, were
somewhat relieved, and his anxiety for his safety diminished,
as he felt sensibly the renewed beatings of Arnyte's
heart against the pressure of his watchful hand,
“By mine halidome,” said he, “much would I give, had
I a pallet well assorted here, that I might catch the
changes of his colour—gad, the tints would immortalize
me; what an inimitable subject he would make for the
Scripture piece of Elisha raising the widow's son from
death—the life just returning to the before pallid cheek
—the eye just opening—oh, he certainly would make a
capital figure for the widow's son—what lovely, beautiful
tints—they vie with the best ever laid out by the
brush of Rubens.”

“Where am I—where is my father?” murmured the
youth, as he recovered from his faintness, “there seems
a weight as if of clotted blood, upon my brain—where
am I?” exclaimed Arnyte, as he glanced wildly around.
He passed his hand rapidly across his brow, “ay, I remember
it all, now—thou hast said thou wouldst spare
my father's life—say I not right?” pursued he, “or can
it be possible I have been in the frenzied delirium of fever,
for the horrible confusion of a dream is on my brain
—I pray you, mock me not with false comfort—thou
hast surely said he shall not die.”

“Be certain the life of Jacob Leisler is safe,” said
colonel Sloughter, “I prithee calm thyself, your frame
cannot bear these frantic paroxysms.”

“Thank heaven! thank heaven, I heard right,” exclaimed
Arnyte, “the words are true, he shall not die!
Oh, God, the sound darts through my brain, and rushes
on my heart—ha! ha! ha!—this agony of joy will madden
me—he shall not die! he shall not die!”

“I beg of you be composed,” said the governor.

“Composed—calm—ay, I am composed—calm—and
yet there is a tumult here within, that vies with the tempest
driven ocean in its rage,” continued Arnyte, beating
his bosom, “great God, how shall I express the wild
rush of happiness, that fills every vein as with a flood?
he shall not die! you have said my father shall live! ah,
your excellency, can words ever express all this throbbing
heart would declare to you, oh let me fall down at
your feet, thus cling for ever, and pour out in one endless
stream of weeping, as though the sluices of my
eyes were rent, my never ceasing blessing—my untiring
gratitude—but this is not for me alone—my whole race—
yes, and chief of all he whose life you have spared, will
join me in these thanks.”

“Nay, nay, my good youth,” vainly interposed the
governor.

“Yes, your excellency, when you look on that aged
man,” continued Arnyte, “when you see him to whom your
word hath given life, free and breathing the air of heaven—when
you hear him call down the choicest of blessings
in the store of providence on his benefactor, then
will you know the value of the gift you have extended
to our afflictions—then will you know how the obligation
is appreciated—but ah, he, my father, is not here; no,
he still lingers in his darksome and solitary dungeon, nor
knows the mercy that has been extended him; it shall
be mine to bear him the gladsome tidings—ay, generous
benefactor, at once I will wend me to that prison house,
and he shall worship thy name.”

“In truth, I fear me, noble boy, you are not equal to
the task; your frame already weak and exhausted, will
scarce bear such exertion and fatigue; you shall remain
here, while I despatch a messenger to the Stadthuis, who
will inform Jacobus Leisler, that for the son's sake, I
have pardoned the father's errors.”

“I will crave your excellence to bear with me,” replied
Arnyte with ardour, “you know not the power,
the strength, left in these limbs—they could accomplish
more than may be supposed, in such a duty; bethink ye,

too, of my father's wretched situation—his chains, and
the insults heaped on him in that vile prison, and all that
he momently suffers, even while I now linger. Who
then so swift, so fit on such an errand of joy, as his son?
others know not the worth of every instant; he whom
your excellency's kindness might select, might be laggard;
indifferent in feelings for the sad prisoner, he
would not count the loss of time; he has no father to
release, and cannot feel like me, how much it is to cheat
the lot, the mourner's lot, of even a pang—no! though
your excellency seems incredible of my boast—for it is
true, but now, I gave way to weakness, yet believe me,
my nerves are braced as iron, and my sinews seem as if
a giant's power had been infused in my system; the
very winds themselves, in their wild waftings, shall be
shamed by the course of a child, who, upborne by duty
and by joy, files on the sacred errand that sooths the
sorrows of a despairing parent.”

“Your excellency must perceive, that prompted by
such noble springs of nature, it is useless to dissuade the
young man from being in person the first to bear the
good news of his deliverance to Mienheer Leisler;”
quoth Nicholas Bayard who, with ill cloaked chagrin,
had been the sullen and silent spectator of the over-throw
of his deep laid plans, and whose countenance
had suddenly cleared up during Arnyte's last speech,
and now bore no trace of discontent, “and I, for my
own part, must say, that I at once applaud the motives,
and admire the propriety, of the action and intention of
this praiseworthy stripling,” he continued, with apparent
frankness, “I must confess me, colonel Sloughter, that I
did disapprove of mercy towards Jacobus Leisler, for I
deemed it wrong, one so criminal should escape severe
punishment; but since the matter is as it stands—since
your excellency hath been so moved by the touching
distress of his son—and I must say, I myself heard the
youth with no little emotion; my heart bled in pity, as
he spoke for his life, and I did forget the guilt, while the
innocent interceded, and wonder not at your excellency's
being prevailed on to extend a pardon and forgiveness

to the culprit, being so powerfully pressed therefor;
none but a brute could have done otherwise—and since,
I repeat, your excellency hath granted clemency towards
Mienheer Leisler, it becomes me to state, that as to
every personal feeling of my own, I am gratified at the
event. Whatever false suggestions may be started to
the contrary by my enemies, I assert, I have acted towards
Jacobus Leisler in all things, even in persuading
his execution, by that which I deemed for the best interest
of the public—the peace and safety of this province.
No liberal-minded man can blame me for what I
have done, what I may have advised—having solely
acted under such impressions; but let me add, admiration
for the son hath conquered in my breast even those
prudent wishes for the father's death; and I am now
somewhat inclined to think, your excellency, mercy in
this case will do more towards planting the olive in this
colony, than would harsh measures. If I am not deceived,
there is a pledge in the countenance of young
Mienheer Leisler, to the effect that he will not be backward
in the compact of peace; and since the urgency
of his filial duty demands his leaving my roof so soon, I
would say it becomes him not to part in anger with his
host. I doubt not he hath deemed me an enemy, but
let the past be forgotten; I have made the first advance,
though an older man—and if he will accept the courtesy,
a horse from my stable, than whose breed none swifter
ever ran, awaits his order to bear him to the city on
his pious errand—while it shall be my duty, as my office
of secretary to your excellency's dictates, to have the
formal pardon drawn out; and as its completion would
only delay Mienheer Leisler's impatience, as soon as it
is sanctioned by your excellency, it shall be sent for the
immediate release of Jacobus Leisler. I extend my
hand and desire your friendship, young man.”

Although there was as it seemed a loathing which he
could not conquer in the heart of Arnyte towards Leisler,
yet in the excess of happiness, his very enemy appeared
less hateful—and the sentiments and actions,
which at another time from Bayard would only have

elicited caution and an idea of duplicity, were in a mind
pervaded with pleasure, met with confidence. So sudden
and inconsistent is the transition of the human feelings,
that he, that but awhile before looked with an eye
jaundiced by grief upon mankind, now excited by a favourable
change of momentary fortune, viewed even
him who he had reason to believe an implacable and
wily foe, with kindness, and became easily a rash and
ready victim for deception. Arnyte had no time nor
feeling for cool deliberation on the evidently studied form
by which Bayard had addressed him—he but glanced his
eyes towards him, for he saw the governor appeared
gratified with Bayard's behaviour, and with looks expectant
and somewhat wistfully, was gazing on his countenance.

“I will not by a remembrance of ancient enmity mar
the satisfaction of the present moment,” said he, meeting
with a cordial grasp the hand that was offered him,
“and, colonel Bayard, I do accept the courtesy you
proffer; and albeit, I hope from my very heart, that in
this tendered kindness, all animosity between the names
of Bayard and Leisler may for ever cease. I will attend
where you lead, sir—for time doth wear, and I long for
my father's arms. God keep your excellency!”—And
having made his leave of colonel Sloughter and Jost
Stoll, Arnyte with a rapid pace, followed Bayard from
the apartment. His conductor, as he preceded him, by
various little attentions evidently endeavoured to win
his confidence, and to erase from out the tablet of his
breast, the late rankling sores and wounds cut by long
rooted hate and ire.