University of Virginia Library

BOOK THE FIFTH.
THE CONCLUSION.

Romeo and Juliet.

When Bayard, accompanied by Arnyte Leisler, quitted
the Governor and Jost Stoll, he proceeded to direct a
horse to be prepared with instant despatch for the stripling's
use and assistance, and with apparent kindness and
attention, as one endeavouring to do away all former feelings
of enmity, by his present interest and anxiety to forward
the youth's impatient wish to hasten to his parent,
he conducted him to the place where the animal was caparisoning,
and with his own presence urged his menials
to swiftness in donning the steed's apparel; nevertheless,
while the task of preparation was going forward, at one
time Arnyte remarked a brief absence of his host from
his side, and when he returned, the number of busy
hands employed about the horse was increased, so
that his momentary departure seemed explained by a desire
of making his kind service keep pace in accordance
to the impetuous urgings of speed from the youth; but
beside the household attendant that had followed him,
there came upon the step of Bayard, four savage looking
men, wild and strange in appearance as in attire. These
were of that race of mixed cast and blood, well known in
the colony by the designation of half breeds, the equal
descendant of the debauchery of the white and the indian,
and inheriting all the evil qualities of the European and

the savage; an idle, loitering, lazy set, the vagabonds of
the settlements, these beings existed by pilfering and
crime alone; leading a wandering life, like the gipsey,
they traversed the province, rioting and wassailing while
in sunshine and health, and when by age, sickness, and
drunkenness, reduced and destitute, they crowded the
werkhuis or the bridewell, or perished and rotted by the
way side. Without a thought or care for the future, the
proceeds of the only labour which the men and women
of this species applied themselves to at any moment,—
the making of ozier and wicker baskets, or shooting with
the bow and arrow at halfpence for the delight of gaping
children and boors,—were almost as soon as received expended
in liquor, for which they crowded the open tippling
houses, which, spite of the law against selling them
such potent poisons, were ever thronged with these unmindful
and wretched barbarians, and who, when inebriated
and stripped of their money, were cast forth by
the publican from his house, and left night or day in the
streets or road to slumber and wallow in their loathsome
condition of mind and body, uncared for and unregarded
except by the sportive or brutal tortures inflicted on their
misery by wicked urchins, who, with impunity were accustomed
to use in such amusement every invention of
cruelty. In every thing these were a distinct people,
equally despised by the red man and the white, and even
scorned by the slave; treacherous, dishonest, and cowardly,
they possessed a vile subtleness of nature, and a
disposition for revenge, whose effect was often felt, though
the source scarcely ever to be traced. Many were the
instances related where his long absence had alarmed the
family of some honest colonist, who in the morn had gone
forth in hope, in health and vigor; but whom the searchers
found lying in some lone nook of wood or rock, cold and
stark in death; his face buried in the sand, and in his
back the fatal wound, unknown the hand, untraced the
murderer's foot; some thicket, tangled and pierceless, or
some low wall concealed from his victim the presence of
his enemy, as he skulked to aim the deadly ball; no track
for justice existed, and even had the murdered been
spared, perhaps his remembrance could give no clue for
the wanton attempt at his destruction, for all forgotton
was the spurning blow that drove from his door the beggar,
who for years had cherished hate and watched with
lynx-eyed eagerness the chance that might repay the
slight injustice he had received with the heart's blood of
the offender; thus remorseless and capable of every
crime, bought and sold as it were for a glass of liquor,
these losels haunted the farms and houses of the colonist
like a pestilence, scarcely to be driven away by violence;
for regardless of threats, they were often forced to be tolerated
in fear, hatred, and contempt;—and groups of these
creatures, boys and men, squalid with dirt, filth and idleness,
were many times to be seen sitting lazily in the
sunshine beside the barn wall, mumbling the fragments
given them by the farmer from the leavings of his meals
who sought for the safety of his farm yard to propitiate
their gratitude, though warned by experience,
how little of such feeling they possessed. Not alone to
individuals were they a source of continual trouble and
vexation, but many times the means of grievous inconvenience
to the government; for incited by a desire for
mischief as well as plunder, they would trespass in
hordes on the hunting grounds of the Indians, rob and
fire their wigwams, deserted by their warrior inhabitants
while absent in some expedition in search of game, steal
and destroy their venison and buffalo beef, and commit
such aggressions as to incite the red man on his return,
to a retaliation on the dwellings of the province, which
usually led into bloody broils, alarm and war. Well
knowing the nature and character of these men, and
their sight, as a colonist born, being to him no rare occurrence,
Arnyte scarce noted their presence, nor allowed
a thought to lose itself upon them, deeming their
coming had no incentive but idle curiosity; in sooth,
the mind of the youth was elated beyond all bounds by
the prospect of preservation of life he had attained for
his parent; his spirits were buoyed to their uttermost
pitch, and his whole soul engrossed with happiness so
great, that no other idea could enter—so that although
he perceived Bayard ever and anon hold converse in a
suppressed under tone with the half breeds, and their
quick dark cunning eyes ofttime directed on him
with an expression which might have alarmed him, could
he have indulged a suspicion of treachery when his heart
so overflowed with pleasure and hope—but he suffered
not that which could have disturbed him to obtrude upon
his imaginings, and with an unsuspecting and careless
glance, viewed their frequent and secret discourses.
The half breeds with whom Bayard thus bestowed his
attention, had all the looks of craftiness of their race;
their dress were Indian hose and mocassins, a faded blue
petticoat that came half way down the thigh; one had
the Indian blanket, and the others the European waistcoat
and surtout; they wore earrings in their ears, and
their dark hair was platted and clubbed down their
backs. In their whole apparel, was an odd mixture of
savage life and civilization; on their heads they had
either an Indian cap, or some half worn and tattered hat
that had been bestowed on the wearer, who had adorned
it with strings of wampum; each had his bow and arrows,
his knife, tomahawk, and cruse for water. It was
evident from the satisfaction that beamed in their tawny
features, that they were pleased with the intercourse of
Bayard, and as they stood looking on the engaged attendants
as they prepared the steed with the careless
and listless attitude of idlers, one of them, as if in search
of some object to break the inaction of his mind, amused
himself by casting in the air a glittering piece of silver,
which he caught as it fell with singular dexterity.

And now the steed he was to mount, was fully accoutred
and brought forth at Arnyte's behest—it was a beautiful
creature, and of a most rare species in the northern
clime—of a race imported by Sir Edmund Andross for
his own use, and by him, a scion of the blood was presented
to his friend and favourite colonel Bayard. The
light, ductile, yet sinewy limbs of the noble quadruped,
looked as if the speed of the winds was in them, and
as the groom led him by the tightened rein, he struggled
fiercely, and champed the bright bit in wrath, shaking

from his mouth gouts of foam which spotted his dark
black hide, like flakes of loose snow caught by the eaglet's
wing in its alpine flight—with chest thick, panting,
wide spread and smoky nostril, and eyes that rolled alternate
with fear, like the wild deer at the approach of
man, and then in fire,—the gallant animal snorting and
pawing with raging hoof the ground about the place
where he was held, awaited an unwilling slave, and reluctant
in his thraldom, the will to which he was destined;
and Arnyte's hand was in his flying mane buried deep
and firmly—his foot was in the stirrup, and the horse
reared, swerved and couched in anger, as if he would
have avoided the power and might which he vainly battled
against—the stripling had risen for the leap which
would have borne him to the saddle, and the lip of Bayard
was busied with smiling and friendly assurance, at
the very moment when a weighty blow from some arm
behind him, descended on the unprotected head of the
unfortunate youth, with an overpowering force and stunning
violence; his eyes flashed—his sense reeled—his
foot and hand relaxed their hold—the steed started from
him and flung him to the ground.

Nathless, while struggling for mastery with the spirited
charger on which his eye had been fixed, and with thought
filled alone with one unsharing object, on Arnyte, the stroke
that felled him, came as from an unseen source—yet, as he
dropped beneath its potency, as by instinct, rather than
chance, his eye met that of Bayard, and there sprang forth
for the instant, in its wildness of agony, a look that blazed
of fierce resentful hate and bitter reproach commingling,
while on the ashen features of Bayard sat a grim smile that savoured
of satisfaction and triumph, as where the tiger gloats
on the powerless throes of the dying and mangled carcass
of his fallen prey after its savage and desperate conflict for
life; but the glance of Arnyte was but momentary, it was like
the last vivid and shooting flash of an expiring lamp ere
it dies in utter darkness, a late start of recurring life ere
it subsides back in death,—for there came a hollow rattle
in his throat the exerted struggling of the voice—there
was a slight, short tremor as though the ice was curdling

o'er his heart, and the wandering beam of sight became
dull and hollow, vague and glassy with vacancy,—and he
lay prostrate on the earth as an inanimate corpse still,
stirless, strengthless, motionless; for so wanton the violence
that had been used towards him—so stiff, cold and
stark his limbs that one would have deemed, to look upon
his pallidness, that light had gone from him never
again to revisit nerve or limb; and in truth for a time as
with the piteous fluttering of the wounded bird, who
strives to raise its flight to the elements it loves, with
plumage spread in vain; or as the battling swimmer
gasping to snatch a hold upon some shattered plank, the
fragment of the wreck, but which seems safety in despair
as now the wave upheaves him within its reach, yet
ere he can seize it, the whelming and deceptive billow
dashes him away again to renew his efforts to attain that
which he had lost,—so life sought to resume its lingering
energies; one by one, slow and heavily, as drops that
trickle down the rocky sides of some dank dungeon, his
senses returned—throb by throb, pulse by pulse the laggard
beatings of his heart and reins began, and when his
blood reflowed it was with a thrilling and convulsive
pang that shook his dismal trance. What certain lapse of
time the stripling passed in the blackness of that ghastly
insensibility he could not tell—yet it was long ere he recovered,
and then the first sensation of recurring life was
sickness—his frame felt chilled, numbed, and deadened,
and his brain was restless and painful and sore with giddiness,
and his sight though strained to burst the dense
film that appeared to cover his eyes, was dull and indistinct—now
it seemed as if there was a passing gleam of
earth, sky and wave that swam swiftly by as with an arrow's
flight, anon all was wild midnight pierceless and
interminable—so light and darkness alternate combatted,
and when wearied and faint with vain efforts, the heavy lids
dropped down upon the blood-shotten orbs to shut out
the confused phantasies that baffled vision, strange and
uncouth noises seemed to ring in his ears, and to hurtle
in his brain; mind, thought and perception appeared
with fruitless endeavour, like the strife of breakers to
o'erleap an impeding crag, to contend for their former empire;—at
length a sudden shock broke on the gloominess
of the dim and wild uncertainty—from whence it came,
or what it was that disenthralled him for the time he had
no conjecture—sparks shot like lightning in his eyes,
and an involuntary shriek and start of pain sprang from
his trembling lips—his hollow dream was startled from
his brows, and he gazed around in wonder as one that
wakens from the delirious dozings of a fever—strange
objects met his sight, for he was in a place all to him unknown,
whither unfriendly hands had in his deep lethargy
conveyed him from the spot where he had suffered
from the treacherous machinations of the irreconcilable
foe of his name—all about him was wild, desolate and
drear—above him rolled the grey and gloomy heavens
frowning and threatening as a thing of wrath, ominous with
brooding tempest. A stormy change since morning had
come upon the face of nature, it seemed as if the bright
host clouds had been but as that gush of joy and hilarity
that is said to herald sorrow—for the sun had lost its light
and drearily the day stole on his altered eye, while the
wan looks of that faded sky betokened the passage of many
hours since last he had read its glories—the wind
howled like a thing of life and searched the forest paths
with its deep and shrill cry of anger and of pain, and even
at the moment of reanimation Arnyte shuddered at its
cold, icy, and death-like touch.

He lay upon the ground in that which seemed a frightful
dell of some vast solitude, craggy and bare, with many
a bold precipice and cavern dark as death, within whose
recesses the desert wind held sway, and here and there
between the chains of belting rocks grew sturdy trees,
and a wild waste of underwood girt each clump of hardy
oaks, black pine and giant beech as on the dizzy heights
where they had taken root they raised their dark diminished
heads—huge mounds of ice and snow were piled
within the clefts and chasms of the tortuous sweep of hill
and crag that filled the bleak and desert places, and as
terrible as cheerless was each beetling cliff and overhanging
steep.—Bound with many a fearful thong that chafed his

swollen and prisoned limbs the stripling lay stretched upon
the earth in that dismal spot—while the feeble motion,
when he had regained sensation, that he made to free his
stark members from the bonds that on him were so fastly
tied, discovered to him his desolate situation. Within a
few paces from him was that brave courser whose service
the false Bayard had tendered him in his dissimulation—
but now all his late fire and spirit were fled and quenched,
and his force failed; for his mane was dripping and
his flank reeking with travel, which judging from his soiled
hoof had been of weary length, and it appeared as
though descending the gorge of the dell he had sank beneath
his toil—for with sides heaving as on a rack, and
frame at length o'erspent and fallen to the ground, immoveable
he was—his gallant chest and skin ruffled and
dabbled with blood, his flesh galled and torn by the pointed
rocks and scattered stone on which he had dropped—
while the big round tears stood in his weeping eyes, and
now and then he muttered a feeble moaning sound of pain
that told of hurt severe and incurable, for his heart laboured
in its deep drawn utterance as though it would
have burst. About the body of the helpless and prostrate
steed, still were entwined many a broken fragment
of cord, portions of whose parted shreds clung to the form
of Arnyte; for by these, along the horse's back, a powerless
and insensible prisoner, the youth had been bound,
nor was released until the wearied and drooping animal,
stumbling and staggering with his heavy load, gave way
to toil; for as his feet reeled, and his form writhed in its
last faint effort to uphold itself, the bonds that linked the
stripling to the struggling wretch, were wrenched and
snapped in twain; and luckily, for had the courser's crushing
weight borne on him, he had not escaped injury. Arnyte
was throw some distance from the dying creature;
and it was the suddenness and power wherewith he had
thus been cast to earth that had so strangely recalled
life and recollection to him late locked in that fearful
senselessness. About the poor beast watching his sufferings,
unable either to extricate him from his peril or alleviate
his condition, stood three of the half-breeds of
whom mention hath been above made, while a fourth
held by the miserable and broken reins, the horses from
which the accident of the one that had borne their captive,
for such Arnyte evidently appeared to be, had, for
the time, caused them to dismount. These animals, accustomed
to hard service and rough travel all their days,
had not laboured so severely as the gallant charger; the
reason for whose being thus abandoned to the perilous
hands of the half breeds was easily to be divined, in the
supposition that Colonel Bayard, sacrificing every delight
and pride in possessing so fine a creature, for the important
interest of the moment, had parted with him for the
hasty conveyance of Arnyte from the place where his
presence had for the while counteracted his wishes, and
foiled his immoveable determination of revenge, or perhaps
as certain a conclusion, while tearing the stripling
away from the scene of action—that his own savage object
might meet with no obstacle to hinder its certainty of
execution; the enemy of Leisler had surrendered his favourite
steed, that its burden might have a swifter journey
to his last bourne; that by an earlier doom he might
be rid of the influence of one who had proved as potential
as unexpected an intercessor with Governor Sloughter
to prevent his evil designs;—the horses of the half
breeds were gaunt-limbed, strange and rugged looking
animals, small and clumsy in appearance, with untrimmed,
neglected and bristling manes and tails, and rough and
shaggy hides, the hair of which was long and uneven, and
while their broad chests bespoke uncommon sinew and
strength, their short thick necks were archless and their
heads hung passive and spiritless, and their large eyes
seemed dull, patient and heavy; they were without caparisons,
for wretched strips of untanned hide served for
bridles, and the backs of all, except one, which was covered
with a small, dingy and ragged piece of blanket,
were bare and naked, nor were the riders inconvenienced
by the want of saddles, but were thus accustomed to bestride
their horses, and when mounted, their own singular
habiliments did but assort with the wild looking quadrupeds
that bore them.

A moment's glance sufficed to disclose to young Leisler
his forlorn and hopeless situation, while at once,
as his eye drank in the dreary and disconsolate prospect
before him, rude memory, big with care and sorrow,
crowded his brain with all the dismal and unwelcome
images of the past, and imagination, gloomy with
woes to come, excited the mind to very sickness; he
sought not to ask a question, even had he hoped an answer
from the half breeds, whose piercing gaze ever
and anon was turned upon him, while their dark visages
were shadowed with an ominous and forbidding expression—his
one glance had told him all, his fear and his
despair; for well did he construe the treachery of Bayard;
his aim was not to be mistaken, and the direful
events that must succeed the triumph of his stratagem,
rushed like a flood of burning and searing fire upon his
brain, while his temples throbbed in unison with the agony
of his suffering mind: on his own wretched stress, his
danger, the smart of his wounded brow, lacerated by the
blow that in the moment of his happiness, had blasted at
once, hope, joy, energy, and nearly life itself; on the
lawless and untamed beings, to whose durance he was
abandoned; and the extent of cruelty and persecution,
of which he was the destined victim; on these, scarce
for an instant he bestowed reflection;—his father! his
rising heart swelled to his lips in that deep distress with
which the memory crossed him; that parent, whose
safety he had deemed all but assured, who, for the time,
as from the very verge of the grave, had been restored,
had been rescued from sealed death, and that too by the
perseverance and exertions of his grateful child; and yet
that parent, so hardly won, so dearly bought from the
rude clutches of destruction, was again abandoned—lost
—utterly lost! plunged down deeper than before in the
darksome and yawning gulf, whose shadow he had but
just seemed to have escaped; and then came the bitter
pang, that stuck as with a vulture's fang into the breast,
that blind trusting credulity had aided malice and deception
to the fearful wreck; and then too came the enforcement
of the machinations, for whose triumph he had been
betrayed, and the fresh budding shoot of hope blasted as

by a stroke of fire. Awhile he seemed not to see the
gray rocks, rude hills, and forest trees, that with their
frosted heads, like tombless spectres, toppled o'er him;
but there swam in his sight the gloomy dungeon of his
parent, and the pale and waning form of its lonely and
disconsolate inmate; the horrid scaffold too, reeking with
blood, seemed pictured to his heart, and on his brain each
vision the wild madness of despair could conjure up, came
flitting by like clouds that are gathered in the train of a
midnight storm when it musters in wrath; the past, though
dreary, looked not so bleak and cheerless and black as
that to come: it was a long and darksome track, such as
is shown to the fainting traveller's eye by the lightning on
a desert wold; but yet mid all he wept not; no tear-drop
dimmed his sight, but his eyelids grew hot, like curtains
of burning fire, and the balls stood unmoved, full
and wide, nor turned to either side in their glassy gaze,
and when excited by the anguish of his mind, forgetful of
bondage, he would strive to start from earth, and twist
and writhe in his bonds until the blood would trickle from
their stretched and tightened clasp, and break his convulsive
dream; then recalled to reality by the agony of
his wrung limbs, he would give o'er the vain and idle
strife which but increased pain, while as motionless he
sank his contorted muscles, he gave vent to a hollow
groan, whose imperfect tone, broke from his swelling
throat, as it were in utter despondency. And hopeless, desperate,
almost breathless and stirring not, he would lie like
some statue overthrown from its base, and stretched in
ruin upon the ground.

This state, however, of horrid doubt and conjecture
of the situation of his father did not long endure, for
now the movements of the half breeds aroused for the
while the stripling from his gloomy and melancholy
train of reflection. It appeared as if they had held a
consultation together on the course which was to be pursued
after the unfortunate incident that impeded their
farther procedure on the way they had been journeying,
but seemingly from the manner of their action, no
definite conclusion had been approached; there was
no hope to them of service from the miserable animal

who was perishing before them, and who, were it possible,
untended and unassisted as he was, could he have
survived his numerous bruises and wounds must have
still been useless, from the limbs he had fractured or
broken in his fall, while they were all unwilling to inconvenience
the horses that remained sound by an additional
burthen. Amid the interval of their irresolution
an instant decision of the fate of Arnyte was started,
and the dark glances of their fierce eyes that shot
towards the hapless object of their deliberation, bespoke
the wild and frightful purpose that moved the relentless
minds of the majority; yet still with one there
was a hesitancy to accede to the full and frightful measures
that were strenuously urged by his companions, to
rid themselves at once of the trouble of the conveyance
of the stripling from the wild and darksome glen wherein
he now lay, and whose dreary shadows were so near
akin to the deadly deed they planned to perpetrate in its
black recesses; nathless he that dissented seemed the
chief, and somewhat reluctant the rest bowed to his
opinion; however ever and anon striving to shake his
thought and persuade him to join in their intentions. And
now in the broad heavens cloud on cloud folded o'er each
other like a dun mantle, and more bleak and comfortless
grew the weather, and soon a thick small rain filled the
air as with haze, piercing and penetrating to the flesh
through the stoutest garment as with the points of needles—the
half-breeds dragged their hapless prisoner with
rude and careless violence towards a huge and impending
rock beneath whose imperfect shelter they struck a light
and collecting some pieces of dry wood and leaves that
lay around, soon fanned them in a state of brightness, and
then gathering themselves in a circle about the flame, regardless
of the situation of their captive, whose being
brought near them was the rather for observance, than for
any warmth or comfort to his sinking frame, and having
drawn forth the tomahawk pipes from their belts, and filled
them with herbs from their ready pouches, they began
to smoke as at idle and listless length they lay or sat
before the fire—with lip and countenance thoughtful,
taciturn and unsusceptible.

The day waned rapidly, for there was no twilight in
the stormy atmosphere, and quick though laden with mist
and fog the night rolled on, while at its cold approach the
air seemed to increase its chilling temperature; the
half-breeds looked now and then with disturbed gaze upon
the changes of the heaven, but they spoke not a word,
and again resumed instantly after the momentary glance,
with an aspect of indifference and unconcern their composed
demeanour as they continued their sedate employment,
and it was long ere they broke the silence of
thought wherewith they had enveloped themselves—an
awful and appalling stillness prevailed in that desert dell,
interrupted alone by the now distant and stifled groans of
the dying courser, or the cry of some expectant raven
eager for the repast ere its victim yielded to death as it
flapped its wings in hunger while hovering above the expiring
wretch, whose flesh was the birds doomed banquet.

“Piomingo, I dare to advise and speak true though yet
but young, for amid my own people I am not curst with
two mouths to deceive and deny it at the same breath,”
said one of the half-breeds after a considerable and unbroken
period of time had elapsed wiihout the exchanging
of a word, and ere he spoke he pulled the calumet
from his mouth with a slow and stately motion—“Piomingo,
listen to the counsels of Peter Tawereket—the night
gathers in tempest and we are far from the wigwam of
shelter, it is better we slay the white youth and carry
back his scalp to Claus Bayard, it will delight him more
than, as he bid us, we sold him a slave to the Utawawas.”

“It is not, brother, that I have drunk the liquid
fire of the white man,” answered after a moment's pause
the person addressed, “but my mother was a Muhekeneew,
and the red man's blood is fresh in my veins that
my christian father stirs me not to such evil—I would
not shame my Indian race though it looks not on me, by
murdering the boy—the life of him who hath injured me
not, it becomes not the descendant of a sachem to take—

though for Claus Bayard's gold and rum I have pledged
me to carry him beyond the cabins of the Mahikanders
to the land of the allies of the French King—and I keep
my pledge—Piomingo breaks not his word with white or
red man—though I extend not the belt of peace to either
of them yet Piomingo breaks not his word as he had sworn
by the Great Spirit—the Kitchtau of the Christian and the
Indian—I will carry the boy to the hunting ground of the
Utawawas—”

“Piomingo, hearken for once to the counsels of Peter
Tawereket,” returned the other, “our horses are weak,
and like the branch of oak before the wind they sink beneath
their labour—we have neither venison nor the strong
liquid to support our travel—and it is a moon's journey
to the beaver licks of the Utawawas;—let us take the
scalp therefore of the white youth and return to the great
wigwam and receive the promises of Claus Bayard—this
is the counsel of Peter Tawereket.”

“Listen to me brother,” quoth another of the half-breeds,
“I can tell the white man by his look, though
his voice speak false—I know from the eye of Claus
Bayard, though his words told it not, that the blood of the
white youth will gain more rum and gold from his hand
than if he is spared from our knives—he would have bid us
tomahawk him, but he did not like to hear the cry of his
blood—brother let us despatch the boy—I hear the wolf
growl as in anger, he seeks his feast for the night, let
us leave him the carcass of the white youth that he follow
not our trail.”

“Brother,” said the other of the half breeds, who was
the least favoured of countenance of all, and assimilated
most in manner, words and look to the colonists, having
mingled many years in their fashion of life, though late
deserting it for the wandering existence of his earliest
youth,—“it will not grieve Claus Bayard for the fate of
his favourite horse if young Leisler perish with him; and
how easy for our lips the tale of the boy's having been
crushed in the fall; it will sooth the prickings, (if such
there can be,) of Bayard's conscience, and the richer
our reward;—brother, let us do the deed—speak but the

word, and this knife shall smoke in the varlet's heart's
blood.”

“Brothers,” replied the leader of the half breeds
firmly, at the same time drawing up his form to its full
height with pride,—“brothers, I have said it, he shall
receive no harm from our hands; and would you have
me break the truth of my words? Ryner, I have
spoken the boy shall live the slave of the Uttawawas;—
Piomingo's word is truth; he will not make it false, for
his mother was a Muhekeneew; and though the half
breed be despised, he will not forget his Indian race;—
Piomingo breaks not his word.”

The half breeds finding their chief thus inexorable in
his determination against the immediate destruction of
their captive, gave over their attempts at persuasion, and
sullenly replacing their pipes to their lips, remained cold,
reserved, and silent in their discontent, while motionless
they sat, and their forms mingled in the gloominess of the
surrounding scenery, as though they made a part of the
huge fragments of black rock which were shone on by
the uncertain firelight.

The darkness of the night now momently increased,
so that all around seemed girt with one huge and shadowy
forest, through whose masses the eye could not pierce,
though imagination found food to shape many a wild
phantasy; and after an interval, the chief having signified
his design, it was resolved by the half breeds, ere they
proceeded from the place where they were, that they
should await the holding up of the descending haze, and
the rising of the moon, to light their journey, for it was
impossible to make progress in the fog that now reigned;
therefore, they eagerly obeyed the directions of the
leader, in heaping on the flame huge piles of brushwood
that kindled in large volumes of ascending pyres of light,
so that the wild and carnivorous beast of prey, whose
cry and bark ever and anon were heard from afar, might
be scared from intruding on their assemblage, while with
feet to the fire, couched on the wet earth, the half breeds
sought a short repose from the fatigue they had already
undergone, ere the hour propitious for their departure

arrived; nor in their arrangement of rest was the safety
of young Leisler neglected. The stoutest of the band
threw his strong body across the weak frame of the
youth, so that however deep his sleep, the least stir or
motion of the hapless stripling would awake him in
an instant.

There is no one in the living circle of mortality, however
wedded to affliction,—wearied of existence,—driven
by misfortune, and reduced in moments of sad despair to
call for the rest of the grave, that calm and unflinching
can face approaching death, and in the hopeless certainty
of mind, can count its sure and rapid steps; strange is it,
that to the boldest,—

For what man, pangless, was e'er resigned to meet the
terror of foreboding years,—the last, worst, yet inevitable
throe,—the sought, yet shunned when found? for
though at a distance greeted as a friend, dreadful is its
garb when near; for to the most intolerable wo it brings
but an unknown relief, so that even the wretch who hath
no heritage but misery and sorrow—whose days have been
but one long series of disease, pain, and disappointment,
shrinks in the last moment from its embrace, as one that
rushes to enjoyment, and clasps a shadow of his desire:
for hollow is the hope of happiness the grave promises.
The tender infirmities, the resistless throbs of nature
awake at its touch in triumph over the cold calculations
of reason, or the suggestions of religion. Terrible,—
horrible is the idea, to be excluded for eternity from the
bright sunbeams and the blessed air,—to be as in a night
of slumber, whose duration may be eternal, for whose
waking there seems no dawn!—and then that fine, sensible
motion of existence that wantons within us, to be for
aye extinguished in utter darkness, while the frame that
holds it and delights in its animation, lies down, in an
undistinguished heap of corruption, trodden upon,
spurned, forgotten, scattered like worthless dust into

the air—alas! there is nothing soothing to distempered
thought in the repose of death; the heart
shudders at the last and fearful home of the body
wherein it beats, whether it be the princely vault, with
its rich coffin and floating and emblazoned pall, the
solitary mound with its canopies of rank and yellow nettles
and long sickly grass, the crowded cemeteries of the
church-yard, with the horrid fruitfulness of its tainted
mould, or the battle-plain, where the ranks of the dead are
blackened in the sun until they decay, or gorge the
ravenous maws of the carrion dogs—no, no! there is
nothing welcome in the coming of the grisly monster,
death, let his shape be lovely as it may:—the more so,
when the sharp and murderous weapon of ruffians is
bared at the throat, with no power to obstruct or resist
its direful purpose. Heated by the world's wrongs, or
nerved by desperation, reckless and eager the self pointed
sword is sought as the blessing of madness; but dreadful
is it to hear the cold lip of others cater our fate,—measure
the duration of life, as it were a matter of no account, a
thing most worthless to the speaker, though the all of
the miserable victim. Fearful in the chamber of pride,
—on the lowly cot of the peasant, is death to man; but
far more dreadful is it, when from the sudden and violent
hand of his fellow.

As Arnyte listened to the converse of the half
breeds, in spite of every attempt at resolution, terror
shook his trembling frame to very agony; and on his
dizzy ear the muttered words of his persecutors struck
like blows of might, while his cold brow grew wet with
the beaded dew, and his lips were livid, while the swarthy
features of the half breeds seemed in his distorted vision
to assume the hideous workings of ireful demons;—the
very anguish of parting life could not compete with his
distress. With an intense attention he heard the discussion,
upon whose issue his destruction pended by a
mere breath; and as it proceeded, his soul was racked at
the preparation of the deed that was to rob him of
existence—the lone and solitary dell his tomb,—the
moaning wind his dirge,—the mountain eaglet to batten
on his corse; was this to be his doom? were all his

young hopes thus to wither and perish?—What though
awhile dark and cheerless had been his road of life,—
who could read the future? Fortune might have smiles
in store for to-morrow: to the last moment the condemned
criminal gives not all up as lost; yea, even his
parent might be preserved, or at least avenged,—pleasure,
power, and joy might be at hand, like a train of
distant and beautiful forms seen in the passing clouds of a
summer sunset, flitted visions of the time to come, but
never to be realized; another day might give all that he
would desire, but that day he heard was to dawn upon his
grave;—the light of to-morrow's sun was to rise upon
his stark and bloody corse, done to death by fierce and
murtherous violence. Indeed, so powerfully were his
feelings wrought upon by the expectation of immediate
death, that when the half breeds concluded their converse,
he felt like the convict respited at the scaffold's
foot; and his mind for the moment seemed as it had received
unhoped for relief.

Accustomed and inured to the mode of life which
often catered less easy couches for their tired limbs than
whereon they were resting, the senses of the half breeds
were soon wrapt in a slumber so deep, and apparently
placid, that even Arnyte envied their unconsciousness.
Although exhausted as he was by mental convulsions,
and fatigued in body, it was no wonder that at times, for
awhile, (brief and momentary as it was,) a drowsiness
that crowded his mind would conquer even his miseries;
and as the heat of the fire struck through his chilled flesh
by degrees, he would drop into a sort of half slumber,
during which he appeared to have a vivid perception of
the place where he was, and of his situation, while the
leading circumstances of life,—that which had brought
him to so deplorable a condition, and all connected with
them were lost, as it were in forgetfulness, while the
weight of the brawny savage that lay upon his breast
would crush him, like the riding of the nightmare, and he
would gasp beneath it for breath and life. Little was the
refreshment he received from such rest, and the slightest
motion of the half breed above him would startle him to

awaken; and in the pang, the cold sweat would creep
upon his temples anew, while recollection of his desperate
state, in the full terror of its reality, would again
rush on his desolate and alarmed mind; then, for an
interval, he would watch the departing storm, as on the
face of the broad sky it faded away, as one that contemplated
the sudden change of nature from tempest to
calmness, as the last he should ever look upon;—and
now fast the mists of the night cleared from the visage of
the dell; and as they departed, momently and fantastically,
they assumed various shapes;—now they looked like a
long and solemn train at a funeral, with canopy, pall and
plumes, and mourners that moved with steps that were
noiseless, and looks dejected, wan and downcast;—then
they seemed like a crowd of huge pyramids, columns,
towers and battlements, the pomp of some great metropolis;
and at last all was disorganized with magical and
rapid tumult, and the yellow and rising moon with a faint
glow of radiance tipped, as with horns of light, the extremities
of rock and tree, and sparkled mildly on the
fragments of ice, and patches of snow and frost that
seared the ground; the stars too soon began to show
themselves in the heaven, at first white and feeble, but
anon they glittered like morning dew-drops or the jewels
that beprank the dark tresses of an eastern queen.

The sleep of the half breeds still continued unbroken,
and Arnyte listened to their heavy breathings, and looked
on their stirless forms in dread, lest they should awaken
and even move, for their motion might forbode harm to
him. He viewed their slumbers as he would those of a
tiger, the breaking of whose sleep would be punished by
the utter annihilation of the disturber; and when as
hideous they were stretched in the mingled light of the
moon and fire before which they lay, and with the shadow
of the night and rock about them, Arnyte observed the
heaving of a limb, as in dream it changed position with
an involuntary and sudden thrill, which for the moment
stopped the quick palpitation of his heart, he would
regard the disquiet of the half breeds until along silence
allowed his drear and ominous alarm to subside, and
reassured his fear. Thus oppressed with the lead-like

weight of the sinewy ruffian who lay across him, his
brows fevered and hot, and his pulse convulsed by quick
successive throbs, dreadful were the lapses of that sickly
vigil.

After thus having endured a protracted period of
suffering, the attention of Arnyte was suddenly aroused
from his affliction, by the falling of the brushwood with
which the half breeds had heaped their fire; for the
larger pieces having been burnt in twain, the smaller
brands dropt from the flames, and blazing, were scattered
widely around; an ember lighted and of considerable
size, by this incident was thrown so near to Arnyte that
its fire scorched his flesh, and partly singed the cords
which bound his hands together, being stoutly tied about
his wrists;—by an effort at once involuntary and desperate,
he increased the injury done the thong, and pursuing his
advantage by pressing it to the glowing cinder, regardless
of the wounds his flesh received from the burning flame,
in an instant the links that had so strongly and harshly
confined him peeled to ashes, and, in part, he was freed
from his thraldom.

After having thus unexpectedly attained liberty for
his hands, the damp of despair, which in the excitation
of the moment had left him, again returned to overwhelm
his bosom in misery; for what availed his exertion?—his
loosened limbs gave him no chance of escape;—he
could not move, but he would arouse a
powerful and unequal enemy—and as he looked on the
brawny limbed, and sinewy formed savages around him,
his heart failed within him;—though he had thus snapped
his bonds undiscovered it was but a mockery of fortune
that with false hope had shone to plunge him deeper
in his wretchedness—it was but an aggravation of his
misery that rendered his fate more severe—more bitter
his cup of sorrow—with thoughts thus maddened, his
wild and eager eye ran over the sleeping figures of his
ruthless oppressors, and when he was reduced by sad reflection
to the very depth of hopelessness, his sight fell
on the girdle of the half-breed whose body rested on his
own—his knife was bared and carelessly stuck in the
belt—there needed no motion of his form to assist the

grasp with which Arnyte seized it—the bright light of
the fire reddened the blade as he drew it forth—why
paused he? the weapon he brandished was firm in
hand—the savage lay defenceless in his power—an instant
the load that clogged his breast would be helpless
in death—and an instant's resolution might give the opportunity
to escape the power of the ruffians to whom
he was captive, or his blood would be bought dearly by
them—he would not die unharming—but the half-breed
slept—slept on his breast, and Arnyte's soul sickened at the
deed: to liberate him the arm of the stripling must destroy
one who rested on his body like a brother in looks, though
with hostile embrace—he must slay one who slumbered on
him silent and unconscious—his heart shrunk within him;
he could not commit that which had semblance to murder,
even though it should save him—the idea was horrid, and
every creeping vein shuddered and froze within him, and
the steel fell from his relaxed hand and with a ringing
rattling noise struck the hard ground—the echo awoke
the half-breed, he stirred, he moved, he started and his
eyes half opened at the sound—that moment was his last,
the youth aware of his danger quicker than thought regained
the fallen poniard, and nerved with desperate
strength drove it to the heart of the half aroused savage,
and in a moment the dying and the conqueror were
covered by the bubbling life blood—Arnyte rolled the body
of the dead from him; the half breed had not even groaned
in the struggle of parting life—though his eyes were
wide open and stared forth with glassy lustre, and his teeth
were set together, his hands clenched, and his limbs
contracted—yet so quickly had he perished, so sure and
fatal was his death blow, that he had uttered but a single,
stifled, gasping sigh as his spirit departed; Arnyte cut
the cords about his feet and sprang upwards while he
threw a quick and fearful glance upon the companions of
him he had just slain—the fire blazed feebly and irregular,
and the light of the moon was flickering and uncertain;
their features were dim and frowning, and their long, lank,
black hair swept confusedly like branches of the cypress
about their breasts and necks—Arnyte almost fancied
they moved and were about to start upon him, and awhile
unable to depart or withdraw his glance, with a depressing
dread as chained to the spot he gazed upon their dim and
dusky visages, but their sleep was undisturbed.

Arnyte now stooped and took from the dead man
his tomahawk, and mechanically he turned his steps
from the place, reckless of the direction of his flight so he
could avoid the pursuit of the half-breeds, when enraged
they should discover the corpse of their fellow on their
awakening—shrinking in awe and terror from the very
shadows that crowded around him, for to his distorted
fancies they took most hideous shapes and forms—
gibbering and mowing like spectres as he passed along, so
that he dared hardly look about him, lest they should
become reality and arrest his progress onwards—he proceeded
without guide or knowledge of his way;—his tread
though rapid was soft and without noise, as though he
feared its sound would betray his course, and his strained
eye was often cast back in searching gaze, while imagination
painted in every nook the figures of his enemies,
and in the speaking wind their hasty following—nor was
he long deceived—he heard their cries of mingled horror
and revenge—their shouts, their moans, their curses, and
he saw them close behind panting and toiling in the hot
chace, near, and more near as madly he dragged himself
along the rude and cumbered track—but yet his exertions
and fatigue seemed in vain, they gained upon him in
the desperate race, and the wild thought ran riot in his
mind to turn upon his foes and part with life bravely
against the fearful odds that pressed upon him, for no
other course seemed left him; when as he rushed along
his dark and unknown road, he stumbled, impeded by
some heavy obstacle in his route, and abruptly fell unable
to resist the force of the shock, to the ground, and
his sinking weight bearing against a bank of earth and
loose stone that guarded the entrance of a-gulley, which
ran beyond the dell itself, it gave way and he rolled
down a brief declivity bearing with him in his way fragments
of rock and heaps of smothering rubbish, ice, snow,
and frozen pieces of bark that the wind had swept to a

mass in the place, until he rested bruised and nearly
senseless upon the brink of the river, which flowed without
the barrier of forest and rock that bounded the glen,
and from whose dark and crag-enshadowed bosom, it could
not be discerned, as it flowed several feet lower. The pursuing
half-breeds perceived not the accident, and passed
on, and soon their screams of rage, and cries of determined
murther were lost in the distance,—and the night and
silence for a while reigned in the dreary wilderness.

The fresh breeze that careered wantonly above
the murmuring dash of the neighbouring waters, soon
restored the half suspended faculties of Arnyte;—but
had his trance been that of death itself, it must have
been broken had it heard the hollow and thrilling yell
as it were of more than mortal agony or wrath that
greeted the astounded ear of the startled stripling a
short space after he had recovered the effect of his sudden
fall. He had partly raised himself from the earth,
and confident in safety from the brutal ferocity of the
half breeds, leaning on a broken piece of stone that had
accompanied him in his descent from the acclivity above,
he looked forth with an inquiring and scrutinizing eye
that sought avidiously for some object of life and assistance
in its desolation, upon the broad sheet of wave that
stretched far out in the prospect before him. The shore
was a waste extent of sand, interrupted by masses of
grey stone that had fallen from the precipices above, and
broken sometimes by deep and sinuous bays sinking far
into their rocky hollows, and covered with shadow so
that no light could penetrate their depth; though the
whole wide surface of the water, for at least thirty
yards from the beach, was one solid cake of ice, beyond
which ran the dark and turgid current, the continuous
spray leaping and bounding like a sea monster, in its race
bearing aloft at times some fragment of its frozen wave,
so that the faint moon smiled on the fantastic mass for a
moment, ere by an undulation it would suddenly sink
as swift as it had arisen, like a spectre among the
abyss of waters of which it was the sport. Where the
sight could reach by the lamp of the watery and weary

stars, the land was a crowd of crag, desert and naked
and dismantled forest, that frowned in gloom and dreariness,
while the murmurs from the foaming river rolled
through their bare and leafless trees—nor sign nor cheer
unto the stripling's gaze of human aid was in that desolate
and darksome scene of wild and solitude,—and faint,
dejected and exhausted, by the labour of wo, travel,
terror and weariness, for a moment he drooped as he
bethought that he had but for a while shunned death—
he had escaped the outlaw's ruthless knife, to perish by
more lingering torments, the untended and unassisted
sufferings of overpowered nature—and Arnyte with a
dreadful shudder, half closed his eyes, sick with lassitude
and despair, feeling as if to look around was a
mockery, an exertion fruitless of hope—and deeming,
as he closed his burning eyelids on the bleak view, that
for a while he had shut out a portion of his misery;—
and then nearly delirious with pain and wretchedness upon
the clouded and troubled senses of the youth, debarred
the sight of external objects by his darkened balls—there
would throng for a time in wild and feverish array, dim
and disturbing visions, which, though strange and indistinct,
as dreams of the sick when dozing in broken sleep
upon their midnight pillow, would rack his mind and
startle his blood with resistless force; and he was fast
sinking into that dull and misty lethargy of obtuse trance
and suffering that the wounded experience in the lapses
of seeming sleep and waking that follows the recovery
of the death-like swoon that had left its victim amid the
dead of the battle plain—when first the confused recollection
of objects past—the turmoil of conflict of a night
of death—the smart of pain endured, and the anticipation
of suffering to commence, are all mingled on the
throbbing though darksome brain; when that wild scream
burst on his aroused hearing—he started, and with dilated
eye, turned to the direction whence the hideous
cry arose—it was not human voice that formed the
sound; harsh, dissonant and shrill, it resembled the ferocious
shriek of rage of a fierce and tameless animal.
As Arnyte discerned the cause of that fearful noise, a
sight of horror presented itself to his gaze—for a few
yards distant from him, where the fractured course of
the stream was obstructed by heaps of stone (whose
frosted sides showed how savagely the waves had struggled
for mastery over its enemy, to which the chill of
winter had fastened it, as one who clings in death to a
foe, tenacious of hate and conquest to the last,) there had
been raised mounds of sand by the chafed and fretted
tide, which having in vain spent its force against the
rocks drove up the hollows formed by its own strength
between these billocks until it made a kind of cove half
wave half swamp, whose flow continued until the extremity
was lost in the windings of the shore or the
cavities of the line of higher land. This inlet though navigable
for a canoe in summer, was now choked with snow,
ice and mire. From the further side of the rivulet
came that dismal howl, and thither as the cry was repeated,
Arnyte looked. At first, his scrutiny was mocked
by the intervening rise of sand, but soon his weakened
sight descried wild shapes moving in rapid and
heedless rout within the shadow of the shore, until beneath
the very light of the moon, within a stone throw
from him, half on the ice and half on the beach, rushed
the spectacle of fear, a lean, gaunt, and monstrous wolf,
hotly pursued by two of his savage fellows, his equals in
strength, size and hideousness, whose rabid appetites appeared
avaricious of a taste of his bloody prey, which
(a human body) with his white and sharp fangs and
claws, buried and cranched in his burden, he dragged
along with him as he galloped from the hungry brutes
that followed striving to tear the carcass from him,—and
when the pursuers had gained upon him and fastened on
his load, he would snatch the coveted prize from the
struggling jaws of his baffled companions with horrible
growls of rage and triumph, which were answered by
fierce and ferocious yells of disappointment and anger, as
with fresh impulse and spring the furious animals bounded
on the flight of their greedy comrade.

The glance of Arnyte that told his own danger,
recognised in the mangled and bloody thing, for whose
flesh the carnivorous beasts were so eagerly contending,

the corpse of the half breed whom his hand had
but a short time before destroyed, in accomplishing his
escape. The terrific sight froze him powerless, and his
life-blood curdled at his heart in horror;—he could not
fly, but stood gazing on the bloody spectacle before
him;—the foremost wolf, burthened with the lacerated
body, was obliged at length to drop the prey and feed
upon it with his fellows. Arnyte saw them rend limb
from limb, growling with savage gratification the while,
and grappling as they stripped the flesh from the bones
for every mouthful, until their teeth and jaws ran blood
and gore; and ever and anon in their revolting repast, as
they peeled the skin and crunched the bones of the carcass,
they would raise their long heads and fiery eyes
towards the silent moon that shone upon their feast, and
howl, bay and yell in fierce defiance at her march along
the pallid heavens, until the hair upon the stripling's
scalp rose on end, in the consciousness of his affright.
Busily engaged at their meal, there had been time for
Arnyte, unobserved by their quick sight, to have fled;
for gloating and gorging on the corpse, at first they would
not have cared to have left it, to follow his flight; but
brief was the duration of their horrid banquet; with
ravenous and rabid appetite, in few minutes they had
devoured every morsel of flesh that had clothed the
bones of the unfortunate half breed; his entrails were
tore forth and dragged in strips and shreds between the
fierce mouths of the ruthless animals;—eye and brain ran
forth like water, as their strong teeth crashed the skull
in atoms, and there was left alone a disgusting, formless
heap of bones and blood, that had dropped from their
eager jaws, to tell that which had once been a human
form, endued with the thousand attributes of mortality;
—and now the wolves had finished with their prey; so
clean had they picked the skeleton, that scarce a gobbit
remained for the birds of the air, whom the scent of the
gore at the morning light would gather to the spot from
their high eyries in the hills. And still Arnyte had not
stirred one single step from the spot whereat he had first
beheld that loathsome carnival on the dead: there he
remained motionless, scarce like a thing of life and action,
and yet he seemed to watch each horrid movement of
the savage beasts, whose brutal howls rung on the ear of
night, shaking with terror its stillness; but it was with
eyes that looked like stone, and face that was marbled
over with the whiteness of the shroud, while his nostrils
dilated as in deadly pain, and his lower jaw had fallen in
very horror, and his breath came heavy, thick and damp
from his labouring chest, which heaved with convulsive
throes, but of whose violence his stirless form and limbs
appeared to be insensible:—there he was; a piece,—a
lightning-scathed fragment of rock, cold and frozen unto
very lifelessness, while the thought of all he risked by
inaction and lingering thus until the chance of escape
was passed seemed never to haunt or rouse him from his
stupor; for to his sight the dead corpse of the half breed,
as it was tossed, jerked and torn by the voracious wolves
before him, looked ever and at times to be endued with
horrid animation; and even in the distance and the night,
he seemed to see it raise aloft towards the murderer, its
threatening hand and its eyes unclosed upon him, with a
ghastly stare ere they were forced from their sockets, and
to the last, the fleshless mouth would mow, and gibber,
and chatter with unearthly mockings at him;—his senses
reeled in anguish,—his brows were hot as bathed with
seething lead, and there were sparks of flame and moats
of blood that swam before his eyes; and there followed
a sudden darkness that covered his sight, as if in death;
his heart panted heavily, and there were strange ringing
sounds within his ears, and his very marrow seemed to
curdle and freeze in his bones;—he felt as if he was
sinking in the earth that had opened to receive him in a
yawning abyss.

The hoarse growl of the wolf who now bounded towards
him, having left the carcass of the half breed,
recalled the youth's departing sensation, and strength and
perception were restored, while the wandering beam of
his eye was fixed on the red and ferocious glance of the
wild and ruthless animal, who sprang with all the savage
haste of unsatiated hunger, whose appetite had been
whetted by his late repast, towards his intended victim.
There was but one of the wild beasts who had approached

near to the stripling; the others yet lingered, and
were still employed snapping angrily at each other with
their blood-empurpled jaws as they tossed about and
grovelled among the relics of their consumed repast,
as reluctant to desert a bone while a gout of blood
or flesh clung to its nakedness. The wild and flashing
eye of the furious brute no sooner had marked the figure
of the youth in the shadows of the surrounding night,
than with pointed ear and gnashing tusks, and a sharp
yell of ferocious pleasure, he trotted to attack him; and
the first consciousness of the hazard in which he was
placed was awakened in the breast of Arnyte, as the
tameless brute had couched upon his haunches to give
force to the leap wherewith he prepared to pounce upon
his unequal antagonist: to meet with his fainting powers
the assault of his gaunt and unsparing enemy with chance
of successful issue, or to turn and seek safety in swiftness
against the long, sure, and untiring gallop of the sinewy
beast, with his wearied and worn frame, were alike vain
and desperate; and though even against all fearful odds
the conquest of this one adversary were given him, what
would preserve him from the maws of his companions,
who lagged behind him, when they should join in the
pursuit; and then too the pack to which these stragglers
belonged were in the neighbourhood, for the dismal
howls that by times were repeated with a clearness and
distinct force that belied all echo, bespoke the perils of
an encounter with a vast troop of the rabid animals to be
not unlikely meeting for the fugitive. Yet mustering
himself for a last effort, like the dying swimmer, when
the waves that are dashing about him seem grasping at
him to hold him back from the shore and overwhelm him
in death, he hurled the tomahawk which he had taken
from the girdle of the slain half breed, at his terrific
enemy—but with blinded, rash, and uncertain aim; he
awaited not the fate of the blow, but endeavoured to
make his flight, and dashed along the unknown shore; the
hoarse and enraged howl of his brutal foe told how false
had been the course of the weapon, of which he had so
madly deprived himself;—onwards he strained with agonized
strength,—the howling beast was behind him,—
closer and closer came that horrid yell, and he heard
the very pattering of the wolf upon the hard ground o'er
which, but a minute before, his own foot had fled; the
wretched fugitive with desperate bounds flung himself
forward, but a giant fresh in strength would scarce have
escaped such pursuer; there was no chance to favour
one so enfeebled by his late encounters as the unfortunate
stripling;—breathless and panting with useless toil, big
damp drops of fear and exertion started on his aspen
visage, which was livid with the hue of utter despair;
his pace was uncertain and reeling as he strove to stagger
onward, and his step seemed laggard and faint, as benumbed
and paralyzed by disease—the ferocious beast was
on him, with a roar maddening to the mind, and stunning
to the ear—his sharp claws were fixed upon his garment,
ripping the flesh and starting the blood,—the horrid
gore-encrimsoned mouth of the brute hung on his
shoulder, the very breath of the savage animal came on
his cheek like the breeze that bears the plague from the
lazaretto; the wolf had sprung and fastened with tooth
and fang upon the floating dress of Arnyte, his hind paws
remained on the earth; he was dragged along, while his
prey struggled to burst from the threatened bite of his
distended jaws; the fierce and fiery eyes of the beast
blazed with rage at the faint and vain contest to avoid
his hold, and with a ferocity that seemed exhaustless, he
snapped at his victim with his sharp teeth, ere he was well
within their reach—

“God!” cried the desolate and hopeless youth, as he
shrunk from the grasp of his ruthless enemy, while a cry of
horror rose to his trembling and livid lip; and his blood
seemed frozen and congealed at his heart, and his limbs
grew weaker and weaker, and shook beneath him, and he
felt himself sinking to the earth, though striving to the last,
like the wreck of a gallant ship that endeavours to ride the
foam and wave that fast swallows it down in destruction,—
with a wild, convulsive effort, to keep back his brutal assailant,
as he fell to the earth, nearly unconscious of what
he did, Arnyte thrust forth his hand against the chest
of the ferocious animal, as if in the unprotected member

there was defence against the attack of the gaunt wolf,
like one that would screen himself from an avalanche
that totters above him when too late to retreat from its
impending death:—at that moment,—that fearful moment
of fate and despair, there was a sound,—a loud, quick,
sharp noise; it came to the ear of the youth like the
rolling thunder over the stormy sea to the gasping and
drowning mariner, whom the waves are raging to engulf;
and at the instant, a dark and gory form bounded above
him, spattering him with blood; and a yell that might
have awakened death itself followed; and at the same
time, a cry,—a human cry of life and triumph was heard
by the fainting stripling at his side: the first had been
the report of the discharge of a rifle, and the wolf lay
beyond Arnyte wounded to death, still snapping and biting
in his dying agonies against the void and unembodied
air, while amidst the darkness that clouded eye and brain,
young Leisler beheld a figure bending above him; but
when he endeavoured to distinguish it clearer, and to
speak, he could only faintly toss his strengthless frame,
as his voice sank into a low and indistinct mutter, and he
became senseless; every power of his overwrought
body and wearied spirit, exhausted and overcome by his
sufferings.

The swoon in which Arnyte had fallen did not continue
long, for the person who had thus been the means
of his rescue from such perilous danger, with powerful
force as he would have raised a child, lifted up the almost
lifeless form of young Leisler, and bore it across the ice
to a canoe from which he had landed; and then he
pushed with swift paddle his barque in the middle of the
stream, alarmed by the pursuit of the wolves, the whole
troop of whom the dying screams of their companion had
called around him, and who followed with wild yell and
howl the track of his destroyer, to the very edge of the
water, where they paused and stood in a tumultuous
band, gazing on the pirogue, as it flew like a star along the
river beyond their attack, with furious eyes and dreadful
cries, that sounded like mingled shrieks of rage and baffled
hunger, as their prey was carried from their sight.

His rescuer having bathed brow and temple with the
cold and reviving drops which he snatched from the limpid
waves on which they floated, soon was enabled by careful
tendance, to recall motion to the stark limbs, and saneness
to the bewildered mind of the stripling, although at first it
was with difficulty, that the heavy lids that dropped over
his eyes, nearly blind and visionless from all the terrors
they so late had looked upon, were unclosed, and sight regained
its force, and his breast, ere it renewed its healthful
heavings, laboured hard with many a harrowing groan
and painful sigh. And when at length young Leisler
turned to look upon his preserver, an involuntary exclamation
of surprise and wonder, broke from him in his
astonishment of renewed vision and intellect. The wild
attire and well known features of his devoted Indian follower,
who had borne so useful and kind a part in the
escape from Kid and his lawless band from the ruined
forest hut, were revealed to his eyes by the clear and
vivid light of the moon as it fell upon the wave, and the
restless canoe in which they floated. It was the White
Skinned Beaver, that had saved his life in its direst extremity.

After the first flow of his grateful feelings had subsided
somewhat to calmness, Arnyte learnt from the
friendly salvage, in answer to his many eager inquiries,
that after having parted company subsequent to the
miserable overthrow of the Leislerian family, when Arnyte
had set forth determined to attain admittance to his
father's dungeon and share its miseries, that goaded by
his own fears and the unceasing alarm of the unhappy
mother of the youth, whose disturbed mind and seared
heart, shrunk from the whisperings of her wretchedness,
that foreboded a double bereavement in the destruction of
husband and child, from the continued and delayed absence
of the stripling, from whom there came no tidings,
he had set forth in search of him. He had traced him
to the Stadthuis, and there for awhile, his pursuit had
ended in doubt; but the lips of all were busied with the
condemnation of Leisler, and the thread of his route
was soon discovered, that had conducted him to the
homestead of colonel Bayard. Here, by an accidental

chance in overhearing a discourse among the menials
who had been present, the red man was informed of the
treacherous conduct of Bayard, and of his now being
carried off in captivity by the half-breeds, whose trail,
without guide or direction, he sought to follow; but in
vain did he endeavour to track their steps; and in despair,
as with a late effort, he took to the canoe and
coasted along the shore of the Hudson, in hopes that by
the smooth course of the river, he might the swifter be
carried to some place fortunate for heading their route,
or that he might intercept them, should they cross with
their prisoner to the opposite shore from the Manahadoes,
if either of such were their course of journey;
and while proceeding up the broad and turgid stream of
the river of mountains with such intention, he had happily
been attracted by the hazard of Arnyte, to his deliverance,
and to the slaying of the ravenous wolf, whose
claw and fang had so nearly accomplished his fate.

With the very first emotions of joy for his own singular
rescue from harm, there mingled the thought and anxiety
in the breast of Arnyte for his imprisoned parent; for
even to the last, in spite of its improbability, he had
cherished, and yet beguiled himself with a latent hope,
that the malevolence of Bayard, however ungenerous
and villanous, as used against himself, had not been directed
to the same extent towards his father; and he
sought but with firm endeavour in his own conduct and
life, for a cause or pretext, that the inveterate hate of
the foeman of his house should be urged the more determinate
and desperate against himself, than against
another person of his race.

No certain information could be given by the Indian, of
that which was sought of him concerning Leisler; though
at the name, he shook his head with mournful motion, and
confessed to the anxious youth, that what was intimated
by report and rumour, such as in his passage through the
crowds of the Stadt in seeking for him he had heard, were
presages of gathering evil that were thickened round his
devoted head like a cloud of arrows, from whose barbed
points there was no shield or defence for asfety. And

while listening to the words of the salvage, the very soul of
Arnyte was excited to frenzy; and with the wild prayers
of one almost maniac, he begged the Indian to exert
the canoe to the utmost speed, that he might reach the
city ere the first dawn of day. The Indian, with redoubled
exertions, replied to the stripling's entreaties, who, at
length, yielding to his weariness and sufferings, was prevailed
on, after assurances that no effort at swiftness should
be relaxed, to stretch himself on the bottom of the barque,
where, covered by the red man's blanket, he was soon
wrapt in slumbers that refreshened and revived him;
while obedient to the lusty stroke of the paddle, the canoe
cut the flashing waves, and swam the hissing waters
like a bird breasting the gladsome air.—On went the
barque; before its rushing prow, in sparkling crests, the
broken tides ran flashing round; the waters kissed the
little vessel's heaving sides, and dropt upon its deck like
dew the lion shakes from off his flowing mane.

The moon, in pale and midnight glory, looked down upon
their voyage, and its festal radiance lighted the livid flakes
that shot upon the crowned waves with envious pageantry;
—on flew the pirouge with a falcon's flight, and the
white foam tossed and raved as it went, like a steed that
battles against the rider it must obey; and on its arrowy
course, wave tumbled after wave, like the wild disorder
of the spears of an armed host in the confusion of the
conflict—headland after headland, darksome glade, lone
crag, and bristling rock, that girdled the shore past which
the barque bounded, faded in its course in deeper gloom,
till far behind they lay in undistinguishable and tintless
masses, covered in mist, night, and darkness. The Indian,
with unwearied arm, plied his monotonous task, and
urged his fragile vessel onwards in its course, though ever
and anon, as he drove at his labour, he would bend himself
with a noiseless motion over the sleeping youth,
watching with anxious gaze his slumber, and as a mother
guards her babe in rest, he would tend with gentle action
to his comfort.

“Sleep, wearied one,” he chaunted, as he pushed his
canoe along the restless tide, while his voice echoed o'er

the far wave like the soothing breeze that bends the tall
tops of a summer forest—“Sleep, wearied one!

Ere the weight of his slumbers departed from his
aching brows and Arnyte had collected as it were the
last remains of his strength and spirits, to sustain which
hope had almost deserted him, to look upon that which
he deemed the last unwinding of his woof of wo and troubles—the

fate of Leisler! A line of golden light, the
advancing herald of the uprising sun, flickered the eastern
horizon, and was reflected on the dark bosom of the
river o'er which the pirouge laboured, and the top of hill
and crag caught the coming ray, while the mists of night,
in rude and massy folds, like a curtain rolled before the
flood of gorgeous glory, that fast broadened, and brightened
in the heavens;—for a time, the dense cloud lay
like an ocean, whose depths are impierceable, then sluggishly
and reluctant, as tides flow back from the beach,
it broke away in bands, thinned and faded like the
relics of a battle, until not a wreck of its retreat remained,
and in the day,—promontory, steep and river bank, sweeping
shore and upland precipice, lay clear and plain, basking
and sparkling in the young splendours of the new born
morning; and now the river's course grew wider and
more lordly, deepening as towards a majestic bay, while
the floating blocks of ice, that had many times during the
past night encountered the slight canoe in its voyage,
threatening its destruction, sailed by less often and hugged
the coves and shores, in whose recesses, like fleets,
huge masses heaved on the water's swelling surface,
blazing and flashing in the sunbeams like gems of price,
and shunning to contest with the stronger current of the
centre stream, o'er which they delayed, until midwinter's
help to spread their triumph.—Calm, beautiful, and magnificent
was the sight of the borders of the river from the
barque, as it bounded merrily onward; here the dark
and frowning forest, its paths choaked with wild underwood
of every hue, shape and species; its bands of leafless
and discoloured trees, mournful in autumnal desolation,
expanded wide and loftily; now close and interminable,
anon opening in fantastic glades, where, although
the view was through a very fretwork of intricate and
interlacing boughs, that mocked ingenuity to disentwine or
to trace, could be caught glimpses of the more open country,
vast and uncultivated fields, brown and bare, except
where detached sheets of snow still adhered to the earth in
defiance of wind and sun; there frowned down on the
water's edge, terraces of rock, barren and savage, the
battlements of nature, whose stern ramparts seemed by
the foot of living man never to have been trodden, for
about them was nor sign nor cultivation, that bespoke
their invasion by thing of life;—while again, for they approached
the settlements, perched amid the most inaccessible
cliffs, was often descried, like the nest of some mountain
bird, the woodman or the hunter's cabin, rude as the
hill which it crowned, engirdled, and apparently pathless
in its loneliness, with wild crag and tree, the monarch of
the peak, where humanity contended with the wolf and
panther for its dwelling place;—close to the brink of the
stream, the dun deer, in undisturbed troops wandered,
bounding gracefully and tossing their branching antlers in
the air, and bending at the passing canoe their large eyes
with an aspect, meek, beautiful, and fearless, as they looked
on man as a friend rather than an enemy;—afar off,
some early and solitary boat was seen making its way upon
the unbridled wave, the forms that guided it, indistinct in
distance, while a white sail, like the wings of a bird, upon
the utmost verge of sky and water, would at times wake
then disappear to the eye; all was a scene to gaze on
in delight, as the rich and vivid tints of sky were mirrored
in wave, mount, and valley, peradventure unfelt the
cold breeze of a winter morning.

But by Arnyte, unmarked were all the beauties of the
dawn; but one object engrossed his sight and soul, one
overwhelming thought swallowed up all pleasure with dire
misfortune; he gazed not on the magnificence of untutored
nature, for dark and fearful visions of danger and death
swam before his eye, and a sound had broke on his hearing,
mingling with his dreams and startling him from his sleep;
a sound that racked and tortured his listening ear and froze
his heart strings, and stopped the warm courses of his blood
in terror; it was the low, melancholy and dismal tollings
of a bell, a mournful funeral sound, too soon recognized
by the unfortunate youth, as proceeding from the belfry
of the Gereformede Kirk of the city of Nieuw Amsterdam,
within sight of whose high and sloping roofs, and tall
chimneys, that clustered like a bundle of shafts, that ornament
the pillars of a cathedral, the barque that bore

the stripling and his Indian friend rapidly wended;—as the
canoe neared the city, more hollow and fearful seemed
the toll of the bell, and although Arnyte well knew it was
the custom of the Court Messenger, whenever any member
of the Kerk expired, to sound the mournful requiem,
yet the early hour,—for funerals were at mid-day; the
stillness which seemed to hover over the town, and the silence
with which nature itself was embound;—for voice
nor hum, nor noise of busy life interfered with that awful
and tremendous peal of death, at once paralyzed
and appalled him; every stroke of the bell, maddened
his brain, and struck like a dagger to his soul, and from
its solemn echoes his heavy heart foreboded evil and
the direst misery that distracted thought could picture:
he desired eagerly to touch the land and yet feared to
know the worst that might await his arrival—and when
at last the barque struck the shore, he stirred nor moved
not, but as transfixed and bound with horror to his place,
he sat for a time, even as first he had heard that dreadful
burial note.

The dock, the ways and streets, were deserted
as far as could be seen up their rude and irregular
lines; for in those days upon the road (for being unpaved
the streets could scarce be otherwise called)
the houses were placed with little care or order, their
porches, abutments and stoebs, jutting out so far, that
each house seemed to vie with the other in the disorder
of its position, so as after the distance of a few yards to wholly
intercept the sight;—and besides, as each burgher in erecting
his mansion, followed at once his own convenience
and taste, in defiance of all rule of civic regulation and
architecture, allowing the nature of the ground its sway,
(it being reserved for the wisdom of modern surveyors
to torture and level to a dead flat plain, a counterpart of
their own brains, a spot whose native beauties were beyond
compare, until blasted by the unskilful hand of art.)
the gable ends of one cluster of dwellings, were close
in the passage way, while others, owing to a sudden rise
of the ground, (the builder loving the shade of the hills)
were many feet behind it, and having the fronts in a very

different direction, so that the streets were twisted and
turned in their course, with the contortions of a serpent.
A dreadful stillness, save the bell, seemed to rest upon
the whole city. All around was lonely and desolate.
Few or none were seen moving, and those distantly and
in haste, along the deserted ways. It seemed like some
vast hive, whose noisy inhabitants were abroad leaving
none to tenant their vacant homes. One single person,
a maimed and loathsome mendicant, festering in squalidness,
and writhing in misery in the rising light of the
sun, put forth his tattered hat for alms with a querulous
muttered benison towards Arnyte, as followed by his
savage companion, he entered the Stadt.

“Master, for God's sake, give me a stuyver to get bread,”
quoth the lazar, “pity me, master, I am old, lame and weak,
and cannot, like you who are in health, drag my limbs to
the kommins, to behold the execution of the traitor Jacobus
Leisler: troth, all the world are at the sight save me.
What ails thee, master?” concluded the beggar abruptly,
as Arnyte bent himself as stricken by a blow, and
reeled forward, while his visage was of the ashen colour
of the dead—and had it not been for the supporting arm
of the Indian, he would have sank unto the ground.

In a moment the force of the shock was past—for this,
although his heart believed it not, yet his fears foreboded.
He struggled and essayed to speak to the startled mendicant,
but his lips failed to frame the question he would
have sought, and he stood all pale and still, with eyes dilated
and wild, gazing on the affrighted and astounded
lazar, as one that knew not what he did or looked upon.
“Why do you linger here Mienheers? the prisoner has
been already taken from the Stadthuis. I heard the
sound of the kettle drums of the Hoofdt-wag that
guard him, as they passed through the city land
poorte. Hasten, or you will lose the sight, Mienheers,”
exclaimed a voice rapid and sudden in its utterance.
It was a burgher who rushed by, and even as
he spoke, his steps died away in the distance which he
hastily traversed. The words caught the ear of Arnyte;
a thousand thoughts, such as haunt the breast of
the wretched, though all indistinct and helpless, and

without refuge, yet for the moment, with the force of a
giant upholding the sufferer, rushed through the stripling's
heart. “I will save him—he shall be saved!” he
shrieked, and he rushed from the place where he had
been stayed by the mendicant's appeal, with a step so
wild and quick, that the red man could scarce keep pace
with his rapidity. On through the city he passed—the
gate that opened towards the kommins was left behind
him—none obstructed or noticed him, for the soldiers
had quitted their stations, and had followed the crowd to
the scaffold.

Onwards he pushed, careless of the rude and broken
path, on which, at another moment, his footing had
been difficult. Soon crowds of people hurrying to
the horrid spectacle of death, clogged his road. There
were old men, with hair white with age, and eyes
too dim for such a sight as they now thirsted to
encounter; there were tender matrons with their infants
at their breasts, clinging in love and beauty,
yet eager to gaze upon the death of a fellow creature,
as they were bearing their children to some
holiday pageant—there were troops of school-boys let
loose from the desk and form gamboling at heartless sport
as they swelled the herd of spectators—and the timid
maiden that would at another moment have dropped in
sickness from the lusty arm of love that tended on her
tread—that would have wept at the expiring throes of a
gentle bird, now in gayest garb and visage rich in smiles,
joined the throng impatient to gaze upon a scene of
blood—Arnyte broke distractedly through the ranks that
impeded his progress, while those whom he thrust aside
turned on him in anger or sorrow as they recognized the
child of the ill-fated Leisler—and now the the kommins
lay before him;—it was a beautiful and extended plain
gently descending on the eastern and western sides towards
the Hudson and the oost vloed, while at the other
extremities rose dark granite rocks and hills, while here
and there along its borders (and now and then a clump
would intrude into the plain itself) grew little forests of
hazle-wood and the ever-green fir—all the wide plain
was thronged with the multitude whose numbers seemed

fast to increase; every site, knoll, rock, and tree were alive
with human beings, all striving for a nearer approach
to the grim scaffold that rose from amid the dark and
crowded mass of heads that like a tossing sea surrounded
it, like a huge and gloomy spectre.

Arnyte was yet far distant from the fatal spot, and as he
endeavoured to pierce the almost impenetrable barrier of
human bodies that were before him, he grew almost mad
with the murmurs of the crowd through which he strove to
make his way;—he laboured and strained until with toil
and exertion the drops of sweat and blood coursed down his
cheeks like water, and his face became black and convulsed—he
beheld dimly defined forms moving on the
scaffold—there was one on which his eye rested a moment
ere it grew dull and dim; he strove to cry out—to
shout, that he might delay but for the instant the fatal
preparation, but in vain,—his tongue was parched as with
fire and his lips glued in horror, and his heart seemed
as if it were burst in twain.—Yet this lasted but a
minute; an age was in that minute! with the frantic
energy of a demoniac he shouted, and his voice rolled
over the crowd, who were in awful silence gazing on the
sad spectacle before them: broke through their astonished
ranks—he sprang to the foot of the dismal scaffold
—there was a sudden and hollow sound, and then a groan
cleaved the air, and the stripling's garments were ensanguined
with his father's blood—a cold, electric shiver
ran through his frame, as a gory head, beard and lock,
dripping with the red rain, and eye and lip yet quivering
quick and convulsive, as in pain and death, flashed
clear and ghastly on his sight; his veins seemed to flood
unto his heart, as his eye met the dreadful object; he
would have shrieked, but it were vain; the imperfect
cry rose to his throat—it was choaked in agony; reason
seemed to have fled him, and a blank void was on his
brain; the heads of the crowd grinned, glared and mowed
at him like fiends; all grew confused, and a wild burst of
laughter broke from him—it was the very weakness of
his brain;—and he fell upon the heaving and headless trunk
that lay before him, whose still gushing veins slaked the
dust with blood.

The executioner's harsh voice was heard above the
sighs of the crowd, that rose like the murmur of many
waters, as he uplifted, with hand buried ruthless in the
dishevelled hair, to the view of the multitude, the bleeding
and cadaverous head of his victim, exclaiming in a
loud tone,—

“Lo! the head of Jacobus Leisler! the head of a foul,
disloyal traitor!”