University of Virginia Library

2. BOOK SECOND
WISSAHIKON.

THE WISSAHIKON.

Wissahikon!

That name, soft as the wind of May, breathing its perfume over the
brow of the way-worn wanderer—melodious as a burst of music, swelling
from afar, over the bosom of still waters—sad and wild, as the last groan of
a dying warrior, who conquering all vain regrets by one strong impulse of
his passing soul, sternly gives up his life to God—Wissahikon!

That name speaks to our hearts with a pathos all its own. Yes, it
speaks to our hearts with a strange and mingled meaning, whether written
Wissahickon, or Wissahiccon, or pronounced as it fell from the lips of the
Indian maidens in the olden time, who bathed their forms in its waters, and
adorned their raven hair with the lilies and wild roses that grow in its deep
woods—Wissahikone!

That word speaks of rocks, piled up in colossal grandeur, with waves
murmuring at their feet, and dark green pines blooming forever on their
brows.

That name tells me of a tranquil stream, that flows from the fertile
meadows of White marsh, and then cleaves its way for eight miles, through
rocks of eternal granite, now reflecting on its waves the dark grey walls and
steep roof of some forest hidden mill, now burying itself beneath the
shadows of overhanging trees, and then comes laughing into the sun, like a
maiden smiling at the danger that is past.

We will go down to Wissahikon.

You have been there; some of you in the still summer afternoon, when
the light laugh of girlhood rang through the woods—some of you perchance
in the early dawn, or in the purple twilight when the shadows came darkly
over the waters.

But to go down into its glens at midnight, when silence like death is
brooding there! Then the storm-cloud gathers like a pall—then, clinging
to yon awful cliff that yawns above the blackness, you hear the Thunder
speak to the still woods, and the deeps far below, speak back again their
Thunder. Then at dead of night, you see the red lightning flashing down
over the tall pines, down over the dark waters, quivering and trembling with
its arrows of wrath, far into the shadows of the glen.

At last the storm-cloud rolls back its pall. The silver moon comes
shining out, smiling from her window in the sky. The Eagle too, lord of

the wild domain, starts from his perch, and wheels through the deep azure,
circling round the moon, bathing his pinions in her light as he looks for the
coming of his God, the sun.

Had you been there at dead of night, as I have been, you would know
something of the supernatural grandeur, the awful beauty of the Wissahikon;
then, even though you were an Atheist, you would have knelt down
and felt the existence of a God.

The Wissahikon wears a beauty all its own. True, the Hudson is magnificent
with her mingled panorama of mountain and valley, tumultuous
river and tranquil bay. To me she seems a Queen, who reposes in strange
majesty, a crown of snow upon her forehead of granite, the leaf of the Indian
corn, the spear of wheat, mingled in the girdle which binds her waist,
the murmur of rippling water ascending from the valley beneath her feet.

The Susquehanna is awfully sublime; a warrior who rushes from his
home in the forest, hews his way through primeval mountains, and howls
in his wrath as he hurries to the ocean. Ever and anon, like a Conqueror
overladened with the spoils of battle, he scatters a green island in his path,
or like the same Conqueror relenting from the fury of the fight, smiles like
Heaven in the wavelets of some tranquil bay.

Neither Queen, nor Warrior is the Wissahikon.

Let us look at its Image, as it rises before us.

A Prophetess, who with her cheek embrowned by the sun, and her dark
hair—not gathered in clusters or curling in ringlets—falling straightly to her
white shoulders, comes forth from her cavern in the woods, and speaks to
us in a low soft tone, that awes and wins our hearts, and looks at us with
eyes whose steady light and supernatural brightness bewilders our soul.

Yes, whenever I hear the word—Wissahikon—I fancy its woods and
waves, embodied in the form of an Indian Prophetess, of the far gone time.

Oh, there are strange legends hovering around those wild rocks and dells
—legends of those Monks who dwelt there long ago, and worshipped God
without a creed—legends of that far gone time, when the white robed Indian
priests came up the dell at dead of night, leading the victim to the altar
—to the altar of bloody sacrifice—that victim a beautiful and trembling girl.

Now let us listen to the Prophetess as she speaks, and while her voice
thrills, her eyes fire us, let us hear from her lips the Legends of the olden
times.

I.—THE CONSECRATION OF THE DELIVERER.

It stood in the shadows of the Wissahikon woods, that ancient Monastery,
its dark walls canopied by the boughs of the gloomy pine, interwoven
with leaves of grand old oaks.

From the waters of the wood-hidden stream, a winding road led up to its
gates; a winding road overgrown with tall rank grass, and sheltered from
the light by the thick branches above.

A Monastery? Yes, a Monastery, here amid the wilds of Wissahikon,
in the year of Grace 1773, a Monastery built upon the soil of William
Penn!

Let me paint it for you, at the close of this calm summer day.

The beams of the sun, declining far in the west, shoot between the thickly
gathered leaves, and light up the green sward, around those massive gates,
and stream with sudden glory over the dark old walls. It is a Monastery,
yet here we behold no swelling dome, no Gothic turrets, no walls of massive
stone. A huge square edifice, built one hundred years ago of the
trunks of giant oaks and pines, it rises amid the woods, like the temple of
some long forgotten religion. The roof is broken into many fantastic
forms;—here it rises in a steep gable, yonder the heavy logs are laid prostrate;
again they swell into a shapeless mass, as though stricken by a
hurricane.

Not many windows are there in the dark old walls, but to the west four
large square spaces framed in heavy pieces of timber, break on your eye,
while on the other sides the old house presents one blank mass of logs, rising
on logs.

No: not one blank mass, for at this time of year, when the breath of
June hides the Wissahikon in a world of leaves, the old Monastery looks
like a grim soldier, who scathed by time and battle, wears yet thick wreaths
of laurel over his armour, and about his brow.

Green vines girdle the ancient house on every side. From the squares
of the dark windows, from the intervals of the massive logs, they hang in
luxuriant festoons, while the shapeless roof is all one mass of leaves.

Nay, even the wall of logs which extends around the old house, with a
ponderous gate to the west, is green with the touch of June. Not a trunk
but blooms with some drooping vine; even the gateposts, each a solid
column of oak, seem to wave to and fro, as the summer breeze plays with
their drapery of green leaves.

It is a sad, still hour. The beams of the sun stream with fitful splendor
over the green sward. That strange old mansion seems as sad and desolate
as the tomb. But suddenly—hark! Do you hear the clanking of
those bolts, the crashing of the unclosing gates?

The gates creak slowly aside!—let us steal behind this cluster of pines,
and gaze upon the inhabitants of the Monastery, as they come forth for
their evening walk

Three figures issue from the opened gates, an old man whose withered
features and white hairs are thrown strongly into the fading light, by his
long robe of dark velvet. On one arm, leans a young girl, also dressed in
black, her golden hair falling—not in ringlets—but in rich masses, to her
shoulders. She bends upon his arm, and with that living smile upon her
lips, and in her eyes, look up into his face.

On the other arm, a young man, whose form, swelling with the proud

outlines of early manhood, is attired in a robe or gown, dark as his father's
while his bronzed face, shaded by curling brown hair, seems to reflect the
silent thought, written upon the old man's brow.

They pace slowly along the sod. Not a word is spoken. The old man
raises his eyes, and lifts the square cap from his brow—look! how that
golden beam plays along his brow, while the evening breeze tosses his
white hairs. There is much suffering, many deep traces of the Past, written
on his wrinkled face, but the light of a wild enthusiasm beams from his
blue eyes.

The young man—his dark eyes wildly glaring fixed upon the sod—moves
by the old man's side, but speaks no word.

The girl, that image of maidenly grace, nurtured into beauty, within an
hour's journey of the city, and yet afar from the world, still bends over that
aged arm, and looks smilingly into that withered face, her glossy hair waving
in the summer wind.

Who are these, that come hither, pacing, at the evening hour, along the
wild moss? The father and his children!

What means that deep strange light, flashing not only from the blue eyes
of the father, but from the dark eyes of his son?

Does it need a second glance to tell you, that it is the light of Fanaticism,
that distortion of Faith, the wild glare of Superstition, that deformity of Religion?

The night comes slowly down. Still the Father and son pace the ground
in silence, while the breeze freshens and makes low music among the
leaves.—Still the young girl, bending over the old man's arm, smiles tenderly
in his face, as though she would drive the sadness from his brow with
one gleam of her mild blue eyes.

At last—within the shadows of the gate, their faces lighted by the last
gleam of the setting sun—the old man and his son stand like figures of
stone, while each grasps a hand of the young girl.

Is it not a strange yet beautiful picture? The old Monastery forms one
dense mass of shade; on either side extends the darkening forest, yet here,
within the portals of the gate, the three figures are grouped, while a warm,
soft mass of tufted moss, spreads before them. The proud manhood of the
son, contrasted with the white locks of the father, the tender yet voluptuous
beauty of the girl relieving the thought and sadness, which glooms over
each brow.

Hold—the Father presses the wrist of his Son with a convulsive grasp—
hush! Do you hear that low deep whisper?

“At last, it comes to my soul, the Fulfilment of Prophecy!” he whispers
and is silent again, but his lip trembles and his eye glares.

“But the time—Father—the time?” the Son replies in the same deep
voice, while his eye dilating, fires with the same feeling that swells his
Father's heart.

“The last day of this year—the third hour after midnight—THE Deliverer
will come!”

These words may seem lame and meaningless, when spoken again, but
had you seen the look that kindled over the old man's face, his white hand
raised above his head, had you heard his deep voice swelling through the
silence of the woods, each word would ring on your ear, as though it quivered
from a spirit's tongue.

Then the old man and his son knelt on the sod, while the young girl—
looking in their faces with wonder and awe—sank silently beside them.

The tones of Prayer broke upon the stillness of the darkening woods.

Tell us the meaning of this scene. Wherefore call this huge edifice,
where dark logs are clothed in green leaves, by the old world name of Monastery?
Who are these—father, son, and daughter—that dwell within its
walls?

Seventeen years ago—from this year of Grace, 1773,—there came to the
wilds of the Wissahikon, a man in the prime of mature manhood, clad in a
long, dark robe, with a cross of silver gleaming on his breast. With one
arm he gathered to his heart a smiling babe, a little girl, whose golden hair
floated over his dark dress like sunshine over a pall; by the other hand he
led a dark haired boy.

His name, his origin, his object in the wilderness, no one knew, but purchasing
the ruined Block-House, which bore on its walls and timbers the
marks of many an Indian fight, he shut himself out from all the world. His
son, his daughter, grew up together in this wild solitude. The voice of
prayer was often heard at dead of night, by the belated huntsman, swelling
from the silence of the lonely house.

By slow degrees, whether from the cross which the old stranger wore
upon his breast, or from the sculptured images which had been seen within
the walls of his forest home, the place was called—the Monastery—and its
occupant the Priest.

Had he been drawn from his native home by crime? Was his name
enrolled among the titled and the great of his Father-land, Germany? Or,
perchance, he was one of those stern visionaries, the Pietists of Germany,
who, lashed alike by Catholic and Protestant persecutors, brought to the
wilds of Wissahikon their beautiful Fanaticism?

For that Fanaticism, professed by a band of brothers, who years before,
driven from Germany, came here to Wissahikon, built their Monastery, and
worshipped God, without a written creed, was beautiful.

It was a wild belief, tinctured with the dreams of Alchemists, it may be,
yet still full of faith in God, and love to man. Persecuted by the Protestants
of Germany, as it was by the Catholics of France, it still treasured
the Bible as its rule and the Cross as its symbol.

The Monastery, in which the brothers of the faith lived for long years,

was situated on the brow of a hill, not a mile from the old Block-House.
Here the Brothers had dwelt, in the deep serenity of their own hearts, until
one evening they gathered in their garden, around the form of their dying
father, who yielded his soul to God in their midst, while the setting sun
and the calm silence of universal nature gave a strange grandeur to the
scene.

But it was not with this Brotherhood that the stranger of the Block-House
held communion.

His communion was with the dark-eyed son, who grew up, drinking the
fanaticism of his father, in many a midnight watch with the golden-haired
daughter, whose smile was wont to drive the gloom from his brow, the
wearing anxiety from his heart.

Who was the stranger? No one knew. The farmer of the Wissahikon
had often seen his dark-robed form, passing like a ghost under the solemn
pines; the wandering huntsman had many a time, on his midnight ramble,
heard the sounds of prayer breaking along the silence of the woods from
the Block-House walls: yet still the life, origin, objects of the stranger were
wrapt in impenetrable mystery.

Would you know more of his life? Would you penetrate the mystery
of this dim old Monastery, shadowed by the thickly-clustered oaks and
pines, shut out from the world by the barrier of impenetrable forests?

Would you know the meaning of those strange words, uttered by the old
man, on the calm summer evening?

Come with me, then—at midnight—on the last day of 1773. We will
enter the Block-House together, and behold a scene, which, derived from a
tradition of the past, is well calculated to thrill the heart with a deep awe.

It is midnight: there is snow on the ground: the leafless trees fling their
bared limbs against the cold blue of the starlit sky.

The old Block-House rises dark and gloomy from the snow, with the
heavy trees extending all around.

The wind sweeps through the woods, not with a boisterous roar, but the
strange sad cadence of an organ, whose notes swell away through the arches
of a dim cathedral aisle.

Who would dream that living beings tenanted this dark mansion, arising
in one black mass from the bed of snow, its huge timbers, revealed in
various indistinct forms, by the cold clear light of the stars? Centred in
the midst of the desolate woods, it looks like the abode of spirits, or yet like
some strange sepulchre, in which the dead of long-past ages lie entombed.

There is no foot-track on the winding road—the snow presents one
smooth white surface—yet the gates are thrown wide open, as if ready for
the coming of a welcome guest.

Through this low, narrow door—also flung wide open—along this dark
corridor, we will enter the Monastery.

In the centre of this room, illumined by the light of two tall white candles,
sits the old man, his slender form clad in dark velvet, with the silver cross
gleaming on his bosom, buried in the cushions of an oaken chair.

His slender hands are laid upon his knees—he sways slowly to and fro
—while his large blue eye, dilating with a wild stare, is fixed upon the
opposite wall.

Hush! Not a word—not even the creaking of a footstep—for this old
man, wrapped in his thoughts, sitting alone in the centre of this strangely
furnished room, fills us with involuntary reverence.

Strangely furnished room? Yes, circular in form, with a single doorway,
huge panels of dark oaken wainscot, rise from the bared floor to the gloomy
ceiling. Near the old man arises a white altar, on which the candles are
placed, its spotless curtain floating down to the floor. Between the candles,
you behold, a long, slender flagon of silver, a wreath of laurel leaves, fresh
gathered from the Wissahikon hills, and a Holy Bible, bound in velvet, with
antique clasps of gold.

Behind the altar, gloomy and sullen, as if struggling with the shadows of
the room, arises a cross of Iron.

On yonder small fire-place, rude logs of oak and hickory send up their
mingled smoke and flame.

The old man sits there, his eyes growing wilder in their gaze every
moment, fixed upon the solitary door. Still he sways to and fro, and now
his thin lips move, and a faint murmur fills the room.

“He will come!” mutters the Priest of the Wissahikon, as common
rumor named him. “At the third hour after midnight, the Deliverer will
come!”

These words acquire a singular interest from the tone and look which
accompany their utterance.

Hark—the door opens—the young man with the bronzed face and deep
dark eyes, appears—advances to his father's side.

“Father”—whispers the young man—“May it not be a vain fancy after
all! This Hope that the Deliverer will come ere the rising of the sun?”

You can see the old man turn suddenly round—his eye blazes as he
grasps his son by the wrist.

“Seventeen years ago, I left my father-land, became an exile and an out-cast!
Seventeen years ago, I forsook the towers of my race, that even
now, darken over the bosom of the Rhine—I, whose name was ennobled
by the ancestral glories of thirteen centuries, turned my back at once on
pomp, power,—all that is worshipped by the herd of mankind! In my
native land, they have believed me dead for many years—the castle, the
broad domains that by the world's law, are yours, my son, now own
another's rule—and here we are, side by side, in this rude temple of the
Wissahikon! Why is this, my son?—Speak, Paul, and answer me, why

do we dwell together, the father and his children, in this wild forest of a
strange land?”

The sun veiled his eyes with his clasped hands: the emotion of his
father's look, thrilled him to the soul.

“I will tell you why! Seventeen years ago, as I bent over the body of
my dead wife, even in the death-vault of our castle, on the Rhine, the
Voice of God, spake to my soul—bade me resign all the world and its toys
—bade me take my children, and go forth to a strange land!”

“And there await the Fulfilment of Prophecy!” whispered Paul, raising
his hand from the clasped hands.

“For seventeen years I have buried my soul, in the pages of that book”—

“I have shared your studies, father! Reared afar from the toll and the
vanity of worldly life, I have made my home with you in this hermitage.
Together we have wept—prayed—watched over the pages of Revelation!”

“You have become part of my soul,” said the Priest of Wissahikon, in a
softened voice, as he laid his withered hand upon the white forehead of his
son: “you might have been noble in your native land; yes, your sword
might have carved for you a gory renown from the corses of dead men,
butchered in battle; or the triumphs of poetry and art, might have clothed
your brow in laurel, and yet you have chosen your lot with me; with me,
devoted life and soul to the perusal of God's solemn book!”

The dark eye of the son began to burn, with the same wild light that
blazed over his father's face.

“And our studies, our long and painful search into the awful world, which
the Bible opens to our view, has ended in a knowledge of these great truths—
The Old World is sunk in all manner of crime, as was the Ante-Deluvian
World;—THE New World is given to man as a refuge, even as the Ark
was given to Noah and his children.

“The New World is the last altar of human freedom left on the surface
of the Globe. Never shall the footsteps of Kings pollute its soil. It is
the last hope of man, God has spoken, and it is so—Amen!”

The old man's voice rung, in deep, solemn tones, through the lonely
room, while his eye seemed to burn as with the fire of Prophecy.

“The voice of God has spoken to me, in my thoughts by day, in my
dreams by night—I will send a Deliverer to this land of the New World,
who shall save my people from physical bondage, even as my Son saved
them from the bondage of spiritual death!

“And to-night he will come, at the third hour after midnight, he will
come through yonder door, and take upon himself his great Mission, to free
the New World from the yoke of the Tyrant!

“Yes, my son, six months ago, on that calm summer evening, as with
Catherine leaning on one arm, you on the other, I strolled forth along the
woods, that voice whispered a message to my soul! To-night the Deliverer
will come!”

“All is ready for his coming!” exclaimed Paul, advancing to the altar.
“Behold the Crown, the Flagon of Anointing Oil, the Bible and the Cross!”

The old man arose, lifting his withered hands above his head, while the
light streamed over his silver hairs.

“Even as the Prophets of old anointed the brows of men, chosen by
God to do great deeds in His name, so will I,—purified by the toil and
prayer, and self-denial of seventeen long years,—anoint the forehead of the
Deliverer!”

Hark! As the voice of the aged enthusiast, tremulous with emotion,
quivers on the air, the clock in the hall without, tells the hour of twelve!
As the tones of that bell ring through the lonely Block House, like a voice
from the other world—deep, sad and echoing—the last minute of 1773 sank
in the glass of Time, and 1774 was born.

Then they knelt, silently beside the altar, the old man and his son. The
white hairs of the Priest, mingled with the brown locks of Paul; their hands
clasped together rested upon the Bible, which was opened at the Book of
Revelations.

Their separate prayers breathed in low whispers from each lip, mingled
together, and went up to Heaven in ONE.

An hour passed. Hark! Do you hear the old clock again? How that
sullen One! swells through the silent halls!

Still they kneel together there—still the voice of the prayer quivers from
each tongue.

Another hour, spent in silent prayer, with bowed head and bended knees.
As the clock speaks out the hour of two, the old man rises and paces the
floor.

“Place your hand upon my heart, my son! Can you feel its throbbings?
Upon my brow—ah! it burns like living fire! The hour draws
nigh—he comes! Yes, my heart throbs, my brain fires, but my faith in
God is firm—the Deliverer will come!”

Vain were the attempt to picture the silent agony of that old man's face!
Call him dreamer—call him fanatic—what you will, you must still admit
that a great soul throbbed within his brain—still you must reverence the
strong heart which beats within his shrunken chest.

Still must you remember that this old man was once a renowned lord;
that he forsook all that the world holds dear, buried himself for seventeen
years in the wilds of this forest, his days and nights spent amid the dark
pages of the Revelations of Saint John.

Up and down the oaken floor, now by the altar, where the light shone
over his brow, now in the darkness where the writhings of his countenance
were lost in shadows, the old man hurried along, his eye blazing with a
wilder light, his withered cheek with a warmer glow.

Meanwhile the son remained kneeling in prayer. The lights burned
dimly—the room was covered with a twilight gloom. Still the Iron Cross

was seen—the whole altar still broke through the darkness, with its silver
Flagon and Laurel Crown.

Hark! That sound—the clock is on the hour of three! The old man
starts, quivers, listens!

One! rings through the desolate mansion.

“I hear no sound!” mutters the enthusiast. But the words had not
passed on his lips, when Two! swells on the air.

“He comes not!” cries Paul darting to his feet, his features quivering
with suspense. They clasp their hands together—they listen with frenzied
intensity.

“Still no footstep! Not a sound!” gasped Paul.

“But he will come!” and the old man, sublime in the energy of fanaticism,
towered erect, one hand to his heart, while the other quivered in
the air.

Three! The last stroke of the bell swelled—echoed—and died away.

“He comes not!” gasped the son, in agony—“But yes! Is there not a
footstep on the frozen snow? Hark! Father, father! do you hear that
footstep? It is on the threshold now—it advances—”

“He comes!” whispered the old man, while the sweat stood out in
beads from his withered brow.

—“It advances, father! Yes, along the hall—hark! There is a hand
on the door—hah! All is silent again! It is but a delusion—no! He is
come at last!”

“At last he is come!” gasped the old man, and with one impulse they
sank on their knees. Hark! You hear the old door creak on its hinges,
as it swings slowly open—a strange voice breaks the silence.

“Friends, I have lost my way in the forest,” said the voice, speaking in
a calm, manly tone. “Can you direct me to the right way?”

The old man looked up; a cry of wonder trembled from his lips. As
for the son, he gazed in silence on the Stranger, while his features were
stamped with inexpressible surprise.

The Stranger stood on the threshold, his face to the light, his form thrown
boldly forward, by the darkness at his back.

He stood there, not as a Conqueror on the battle field, with the spoils of
many nations trampled under his feet.

Towering above the stature of common men, his form was clad in the
dress of a plain gentleman of that time, fashioned of black velvet, with ruffles
on the bosom and around the wrist, diamond buckles gleaming from his
shoes.

Broad in the shoulders, beautiful in the sinewy proportions of each limb,
he stood there, extending his hat in one hand, while the other gathered his
heavy cloak around the arm.

His white forehead, large, overarched eyes, which gleamed even through
the darkness of the room with a calm, clear light; his lips were firm; his

chin round and full; the general contour of his face stamped with the settled
beauty of mature manhood, mingled with the fire of chivalry.

In one word, he was a man whom you would single out among a crowd
of ten thousand, for his grandeur of bearing, his calm, collected dignity of
expression and manner.

“Friends,” he again began, as he started back, surprised at the sight of
the kneeling enthusiasts, “I have lost my way—”

“Thou hast not lost thy way,” spoke the voice of the old man, as he
arose and confronted the stranger; “thou hast found thy way to usefulness
and immortal renown!”

The Stranger advanced a footstep, while a warm glow overspread his
commanding face. Paul stood as if spell-bound by the calm gaze of his
clear, deep eyes.

“Nay—do not start, nor gaze upon me in such wonder! I tell thee the
voice that speaks from my lips, is the voice of Revelation. Thou art called
to a great work; kneel before the altar and receive thy mission!”

Nearer to the altar drew the Stranger.

“This is but folly—you make a mock of me!” he began; but the wild
gaze of the old man thrilled his heart, as with magnetic fire. He paused,
and stood silent and wondering.

“Nay, doubt me not! To-night, filled with strange thoughts on your
country's Future, you laid yourself down to sleep within your habitation in
yonder city. But sleep fled from your eyes—a feeling of restlessness drove
you forth into the cold air of night—”

“This is true!” muttered the Stranger in a musing tone, while his face
expressed surprise.

“As you dashed along, mounted on the steed which soon will bear your
form in the ranks of battle, the cold air of night fanned your hot brow, but
could not drive from your soul the Thought of your Country!”

`How knew you this?” and the Stranger started forward, grasping the
old man suddenly by the wrist.

Deeper and bolder thrilled the tones of the old Enthusiast.

“The rein fell loosely on your horse's neck—you let him wander, you
cared not whither! Still the thought that oppressed your soul was the future
of your country. Still great hopes—dim visions of what is to come—
floating panoramas of battle and armed legions—darted one by one over
your soul. Even as you stood on the threshold of yonder door, asking, in
calm tones, the way through the forest, another and a deeper question rose
to your lips —”

“I confess it!” said the Stranger, his tone catching the deep emotion of
the old man's voice. “As I stood upon the threshold, the question that
rose to my lips was—

“Is it lawful for a SUBJECT to draw sword against his King?”

“Man! You read the heart!” and this strange man of commanding

form and thoughtful brow, gazed fixedly in the eyes of the Enthusiast,
while his face expressed every conflicting emotion of doubt, suspicion, surprise
and awe.

“Nay, do not gaze upon me in such wonder! I tell thee a great work
has been allotted unto thee, by the Father of all souls! Kneel by this
altar—and here, in the silence of night, amid the depths of these wild woods
—will I anoint thee Deliverer of this great land, even as the men of Judah,
in the far-gone time, anointed the brows of the chosen David!”

It may have been a sudden impulse, or perchance, some conviction of the
future flashed over the Stranger's soul, but as the gloom of that chamber
gathered round him, as the voice of the old man thrilled in his ear, he felt
those knees, which never yielded to man, sink beneath him, he bowed before
the altar, his brow bared, and his hands laid upon the Book of God.

The light flashed over his bold features, glowing with the beauty of manhood
in its prime, over his proud form, dilating with a feeling of inexpressible
agitation.

On one side of the altar stood the old man—the Priest of the Wissahikon
—his silver hair waving aside from his flushed brow—on the other, his son,
bronzed in face, but thoughtful in the steady gaze of his large full eyes.

Around this strange group all was gloom: the cold wintry air poured
through the open door, but they heeded it not.

“Thou art called to the great work of a Champion and Deliverer!
Soon thou wilt ride to battle at the head of legions—soon thou wilt lead a
people on to freedom—soon thy sword will gleam like a meteor over the
ranks of war!”

As the voice of the old man in the dark robe, with the silver cross flashing
on his heart, thrills through the chamber—as the Stranger bows his
head as if in reverence, while the dark-browed son looks silently on—look
yonder, in the dark shadows of the doorway!

A young form, with a dark mantle floating round her white robes, stands
trembling there. As you look, her blue eye dilates with fear, her hair
streams in a golden shower, down to the uncovered shoulders. Her finger
is pressed against her lip; she stands doubting, fearing, trembling on the
threshold.

Unseen by all, she fears that her father may work harm to the kneeling
Stranger. What knows she of his wild dreams of enthusiasm? The
picture which she beholds terrifies her. This small and gloomy chamber,
lighted by the white candles—the altar rising in the gloom—the Iron Cross
confronting the kneeling man, like a thing of evil omen—her brother, mute
and wondering—her father, with white hairs floating aside from his flushed
forehead. The picture was singular and impressive: the winter wind,
moaning sullenly without, imparted a sad and organ-like music to the scene.

“Dost thou promise, that when the appointed time arrives, thou wilt be
found ready, sword in hand, to fight for thy country and thy God?”

It was in tones broken by emotion, that the Stranger simply answered—
“I do!”

“Dost thou promise, in the hour of thy glory—when a nation shall bow
before thee—as in the fierce moment of adversity,—when thou shalt behold
thy soldiers starving for want of bread—to remember the great truth,
written in these words—`I am but the Minister of God in the great work
of a nation's freedom.”'

Again the bowed head, again the tremulous—“I do promise!”

“Then, in His name, who gave the New World to the millions of the
human race, as the last altar of their rights, I do consecrate thee its—
Deliverer!”

With the finger of his extended hand, touched with the anointing oil, he
described the figure of a Cross on the white forehead of the Stranger, who
raised his eyes, while his lips murmured as if in prayer.

Never was nobler King anointed beneath the shadow of Cathedral arch
—never did holier Priest administer the solemn vow! A poor Cathedral,
this rude Block House of the Wissahikon—a plainly-clad gentleman, this
kneeling Stranger—a wild Enthusiast, the old man! I grant it all. And
yet, had you seen the Enthusiasm of the white-haired Minister, reflected in
the Stranger's brow, and cheek, and eyes, had you marked the contrast between
the shrunken form of the “Priest,” and the proud figure of the
Anointed,—both quivering with the same agitation,—you would confess
with me, that this Consecration was full as holy, in the sight of Heaven, as
that of “Good King George.”

And all the while that young man stood gazing on the stranger in silent
awe, while the girl, trembling on the threshold, a warm glow lightens up
her face, as she beheld the scene.

“When the time comes, go forth to victory! On thy brow, no conqueror's
blood-red wreath, but this crown of fadeless laurel!”

He extends his hand, as if to wreath the Stranger's brow, with the leafy
crown—yet look! A young form steals up to his side, seizes the crown
from his hand, and, ere you can look again, it falls upon the bared brow of
the kneeling man.

He looks up and beholds that young girl, with the dark mantle gathered
over her white robes, stand blushing and trembling before the altar, as
though frightened at the boldness of the deed.

“It is well!” said the aged man, regarding his daughter with a kindly
smile. “From whom should the Deliverer of a Nation receive his crown
of laurel, but from the hands of a stainless woman!”

“Rise! The Champion and Leader of a People!” spoke the deep voice
of the son, as he stood before the altar, surveying, with one glance, the face
of his father—the countenance of the blushing girl, and the bowed head of
the Stranger. “Rise, sir, and take this hand, which was never yet given

to man! I know not thy name, yet, on this book, I swear to be faithful to
thee, even to the death!”

The Stranger rose, proudly he stood there, as with the consciousness of
his commanding look and form. The laurel-wreath encircled his white
forehead; the cross, formed by the anointing oil, glistened in the light.

Paul, the son, buckled a sword to his side; the old man extended his
hands as if in blessing, while the young girl looked up silently into his face.

They all beheld the form of this strange man shake with emotion; while
that face, whose calm beauty had won their hearts, now quivered in every
fibre.

The wind moaned sadly over the frozen snow, yet these words, uttered
by the stranger, were heard distinctly by all—

“From you, old man, I take the vow! From you, fair girl, the laurel!
From you, brave friend, the sword! On this book I swear to be faithful
unto all!”

And as the light flashed over his quivering features, he laid his hand upon
the Book and kissed the hilt of the sword.

Years passed.

The memory of that New Year's night of 1774, perchance, had passed
with years, and lost all place in the memory of living being.

America was a nation—Washington was President.

Through the intervals of the trees shine the beams of the declining sun,
but the Block-House was a mass of ruins. Burned one night by the British,
in the darkest hour of the war, its blackened timbers were yet encircled by
green leaves.

Still the smiling summer sun shone over the soft sward and among the
thickly clustered trees of Wissahikon.

But Father—Son—Daughter—where are they?

Yonder, a square enclosure of stone shuts three green mounds out from
the world.

The sad story of their lives may not be told in few words. The terrors
of that night when the Block-House was fired, and—but we must not speak
of it! All we can say is—look yonder, and behold their graves!

Hark! The sound of horses' hoofs! A man of noble presence appears,
guiding his gallant grey steed, along the winding road. He dismounts; the
horse wanders idly over the sod, cropping the fragrant wild grass.

This man of noble presence, dressed in plain black velvet, with a star
gleaming on his breast, with a face, magnificent in its wrinkled age, as it was
beautiful in its chivalric manhood—this man of noble presence, before whom
kings may stand uncovered, approaches the ruin of the Block-House.

Do you see his eye light up again with youthful fire, his lip quiver with
an agitation deeper than battle-rage?

There he stands, while the long shadows of the trees darken far over the
sward—there, while the twilight deepens into night, gazing with a heaving
chest and quivering lip, upon the Ruins of the old Block-House.

Perchance he thinks of the dead, or it may be his thoughts are with
scenes of the Past—perchance, even now, a strange picture rises before him!

—That picture a darkened chamber, with a white altar rising in its centre,
while an old man, and his brave son, and virgin daughter, all gather
round a warrior form, hailing him with one voice—

II.—THE MIDNIGHT DEATH.

Let me tell you a legend of the Revolution—a legend that even now
makes my blood run cold to think upon.

You all have seen the massive rock that projects out into the roadside
near the Red Bridge. You have seen the level space, that spreads from
this rock to that ancient buttonwood tree; you have seen that cluster of
mills, and cottages and barns, nestling there, in the embrace of the wild
Wissahikon, with the dark rocks and the darker trees frowning far above.

It was here along this open space—about the time of the Battle of Germantown—it
was here at dead of night, when the moon was shining down
through a wilderness of floating clouds, that there came an old man and his
four sons, all armed with rifle, powder-horn and knife.

They came stealing down that rock—they stood in the centre of that
level space—a passing ray of moonlight shone over the tall form of that old
man, with his long white hairs floating on the breeze—over the manly
figures of his sons.

And why came that old farmer from the woods at dead of night, stealing
toward the Wissahikon, with his four tall sons around him, armed with rifle
and with knife?

To-night there is a meeting at you lonely house far up the Wissahikon

—a meeting of all the farmers of Germantown, who wish to join the army
of Mister Washington, now hiding away in the wilds of the Skippack.

The old farmer and his children go to join that meeting. Old as he is,
there is yet fiery blood in his veins—old as he is, he will yet strike a blow
for George Washington.

Suddenly he turns—he flings the blaze of a lantern full in the faces of
his sons.

“You are all here, my children,” he said, “and yet not all.” A gleam
of deep sorrow shot from the calm blue eye.

In that moment he remembered that missing son—his youngest boy with
those laughing locks of golden hair, with that eye of summer blue.

One year ago from this night that youth, George Derwent, had disappeared—no
one knew whither. There was a deep mystery about it all.
It was true that this young man, at the time of his disappearance, was betrothed
to a beautiful girl—an orphan child—who had been reared in the
family of an old Tory down the Wissahikon, an old Tory named Isaac
Warden, who was in the pay of the British. It was true that there was
some strange connection between this Tory and young Derwent; yet old
Michael his father, had heard no tidings of his son for a year—there was a
dark mystery about the whole affair.

And while the old man stood there, surveying the faces of his sons, there
came stealing along the narrow road, from the shadows of the cottage and
mill, the form of a young and beautiful girl, with a dark mantle thrown
loosely over her white dress, with her long black hair waving in free tresses
about her shoulders.

It was Ellen, the betrothed of George Derwent, who had now been missing
from the wilds of Wissahikon for a year.

And why comes this orphan girl, with her full dark eye, with her long
black hair waving on the breeze, with her lovely form veiled in a loose
mantle? Why came she hither so lonely at dead of night?

This night, one year ago, George Derwent bade her good-bye under the
shade of that buttonwood tree—told her that some dark mysterious cause
would lead him from the valley for a year—and then, pressing the last
good-bye on her lips, swore to meet her under this same tree, after the
lapse of a year, at this very hour.

And now she comes to meet her lover—and now she comes to keep
her tryst.

And the moon, beaming from the parted clouds, fell over her form, as she
came in all her beauty toward that buttonwood tree, looking for all the
world like the spirit of that lonely dell.

With a muttered shriek she beheld old Michael standing there. Then,
rushing forward, she seized his withered hand, and bade him beware of the
lonely house of the Wissahikon.

That night, at the old Tory's house, she had overheard the plot of some

British troopers to surprise the meeting of the patriot farmers—to surprise
them and crush them at a blow.

Even as she spoke, grasping that old man's withered hand, there to the
south, was heard the tramp of steeds. Already the British troopers came
on to the work of massacre.

A cloud passed over the moon—it was dark—in a moment it was light
again.

That level space between the rock and the tree was vacant—the maiden
was gone into the shade of the forest trees—and there on that bold rock,
half hidden by the thick foliage, there stood Michael Derwent and his four
sons, waiting for the assassin-band.

Hark! The tramp of steeds! Near—and near and nearer yet it grows!

Look! They emerge from the shadow of the mill, ten British troopers,
mounted on stout steeds, with massy cap upon each brow, pistols in each
holster, swords by each side.

For a moment the moon shone over their glittering array, and then all is
dark. Hark to that old man's whisper—

“My boys, do you see them Britishers? Mark each one of you his
man; and when they cross the line between this rock and that Buttonwood
tree—then fire!”

And they came on.

The captain of the band waved his sword boastingly in the air.

In a moment, he cried, we will be—in the midst of the rebels—he would
have said; but the words died on his lips.

He fell from his steed—with a horrid curse he fell—he was dead!

Did you see that flash from the trees? Did you hear that shout of old
Michael? Did you hear the crack of the rifles?

Look, as the smoke goes up to Heaven—look, as the moon shines out
from a cloud!

Where, a moment ago, were ten bold troopers riding forward at their
ease, now are but six. There are four dead men upon the ground—yonder
through the Wissahikon dash four riderless steeds.

With a wild yell the six troopers spur their horses to the fatal rock—they
rear their hoofs against its breast—there is a moment of murder and death.

Look! That trooper with the slouching hat—the dark plume drooping
over his brow—he breasts his steed against the rock—that jet black horse
flings his hoof high against the flinty barrier. While the moon hides her
face behind that cloud, that trooper with the plume drooping over his brow,
leans over the neck of his steed—he seizes old Michael by the throat, he
drags him from the rock, he spurs his horse toward the stream, and that old
man hangs there, quivering at the saddle-bow.

Then it was that old Michael made a bold struggle for his life. He drew
his hunting knife from his belt—he raised it in the darkened air; but look—
the trooper snatches it from his grasp.

“Die, Rebel!” he shouts. Bending over his steed, he strikes it deep
into the old man's neck down to his heart.

Then the moon shone out. Then, as the old man fell, the moon shone
over his face, convulsed in death, over his glaring eyes, over his long white
hair, dabbled in blood.

He fell with the knife sticking in his throat.

Then the trooper slowly dismounted from his steed—he kneels beside
the corse—his long dark plume falls over the face of the dead man.

And there he kneels, while the people of the valley, aroused by the
sound of conflict, come hastening on with torches—there, while that other
band of British troopers, sweeping from the north, surprise the lonely house
of the Wissahikon, and come over the stream with their prisoner in their
grasp—there while the sons of Michael Derwent—there are only two now
—stood pinioned beside the corse of their father, there kneels that trooper,
with his long plume drooping over the dead man's face.

Look—that old man with those hawk-like eyes, the sharp nose and thin
lips—that is the old Tory, Isaac Warden.

Look—that fair girl, stealing from the shade of that tree it is Ellen, the
orphan girl, the betrothed of the missing George Derwent.

Look! The trees towering above are reddened by the light of torches.
Hark—the Wissahikon rolls murmuringly on—still that trooper kneels
there, bending down with that long dark plume drooping over the dead
man's face.

A strange shudder—an unknown fear thrills through the hearts of all
around. No one dared to arouse the kneeling man.

At last that burly trooper advances—he lays his hand upon the shoulder
of the kneeling man—he bids him look up. And he does look up!

Ah, what a shudder ran through the group—ah, what a groan was heard
from the white lips of those two sons of Michael Derwent! Even that
British captain starts back in horror of that face.

The trooper looked up—the light shone upon a young face with light
blue eyes, and locks of golden hair waving all around it,—but there was a
horror written on that face, worse than death, a horror like that which
stamps the face of a soul forever lost.

It was the face of George Derwent—he knelt beside the dead body of
his father—with that knife sticking in his throat.

For a moment there was an awful silence. The Parricide slowly rose,
turned his face from the dead, and folded his arms.

Then a light footstep broke the deep silence of this scene—a fair form
came softly through the crowd—it was Ellen, the Orphan Girl.

“George—George, I see you once more. You are come,” she cried, in
her wild joy, rushing to his arms. But the cry of joy died away in a
groan of horror. She beheld that awful face—one of her dark tresses swept
his clenched right hand. That hand was wet with blood.

Then like a crushed reed, she cowered back upon the ground. Her
lover spoke not, but he slowly raised that blood-red hand in the light, and
then—he pointed to the corse of Michael Derwent, with the reeking knife
standing out from the gash along the throat.

Then the full horror of that hour burst upon the maiden's heart. Then
she slowly rose, then she laid her quivering hand upon the arm of that
hoary Traitor—Isaac Warden.

“Old man!” she whispered, in that low deep tone that came from her
bursting heart.

“It is now one year since you told George Derwent that he could not
win my hand—the hand of your son's child—unless he engaged in your
service as a British spy, (this night, and this night only did I learn the
mystery of that foul bargain.) For one year you have reaped the gains of
his degradation—and now, after that year is past, he, George Derwent, who
loved your son's daughter, with as true a love as ever throbbed beneath the
blue heavens—he returns to reap his harvest, and—oh, God—behold that
harvest!”

And with her dark eyes starting from their sockets, she pointed to the
ghastly son, and the dead father. Then in low, deep tones, a curse trembled
from her white lips—the orphan's curse upon that hoary traitor. And he
trembled. Yes, grown grey in guilt, he trembled, for there is something so
dark, so dread in that curse of a wronged orphan, as it quivers up there,
that methinks the angels around the Throne of God turn pale and weep at
the sound.

And then while this scene froze the bystanders with awe, George Derwent
slowly opened his vest—he unstrung a chain of slender gold from his
neck, he took the locket from the place where it had hung for one year;
moved by each throbbing of his heart—he gave it to the maiden.

He then pointed to her form—and then to Heaven. To his own—and
then downward. That gesture spoke volumes.

“You to Heaven—I—there.”

Then with that blood-stained hand he tore the British Lion from his
breast—he trampled it under foot. Then gathering the strength of his
strong arm for the effort, he tore that British uniform—that scarlet tainted
uniform—from his manly chest—he rent it into rags.

Then without a word, he mounted his steed—he rode toward the stream
—he turned that ghastly face over his shoulder.

“Ellen!' he shrieked, and then he was gone.

“Ellen!” he shrieked, and then there was the sound of a steed dashing
through the water, crashing through the woods.

Then a shriek so wild, so dread, rang on the air—still the Parricide
thundered on.

Not more than a quarter of a mile from the scene of this legend, there is
a steep rock, rising one hundred feet above the dark waters of the Wissahikon—rising

with a robe of gnarled pines all about it, rising like a huge
wreck of some primeval world.

The Parricide thundered on and on—at last his steed tottered on the
verge of this rock.

For a moment the noble horse refused to take the leap.

But there, there is a dark mist before the eyes of the Parricide—there
was the figure of an old man—not a phantom; ah, no! ah, no! It was too
real for that—there was the figure of an old man, that knife protruding from
the fatal wound, that white hair waving in dribbled blood.

And there was a crash—then an awful pause—then far, far down the
dell the yell of the dying horse and his rider mingled in one, and went
quivering up to God.

III —THE BIBLE LEGEND OF THE WISSAHIKON.

It was here in these wilds of the Wissahikon, on the day of the battle,
as the noonday sun came shining through the thickly clustered leaves, that
two men met in deadly combat. They grappled in deadly conflict near a
rock, that rose—like the huge wreck of some primeval world—at least one
hundred feet above the dark waters of the Wissahikon.

That man with the dark brow, and the darker grey eye, flashing, with
deadly light, with the muscular form, clad in the blue hunting frock of the
Revolution, is a Continental named Warner. His brother was murdered
the other night at the Massacre of Paoli. That other man, with long black
hair, drooping along his cadaverous face, is clad in the half-military costume
of a Tory refugee. That is the murderer of Paoli, named Dabney.

They had met there in the woods by accident, and now they fought, not
with sword or rifle, but with long and deadly hunting knives, that flash in
the light, as they go turning and twining and twisting over the green sward.

At last the Tory was down! Down on the green sward with the knee
of the Continental upon his breast—that upraised knife quivering in the
light, that dark grey eye flashing death into his face!

“Quarter—I yield!” gasped the Tory, as the knee was pressed upon
his breast—“Spare me—I yield!”

“My brother!” said the Patriot soldier, in that low deep tone of deadly
hate—“My brother cried for `quarter' on the night of Paoli, and, even as
he clung to your knees, you struck that knife into his heart! Oh! I will
give you the quarter of Paoli!”

And his hand was raised for the blow, and his teeth were clenched in
deadly hate. He paused for a moment, and then pinioned the Tory's arms,
and with one rapid stride dragged him to the verge of the rock, and held
him quivering over the abyss.

“Mercy!” gasped the Tory, turning black and ashy by turns, as that
awful gulf yawned below. “Mercy! I have a wife—a child—spare me!”

Then the Continental, with his muscular strength gathered for the effort,
shook the murderer once more over the abyss, and then hissed this bitter
sneer between his teeth:

“My brother had a wife and two children!—The morning after the night
of Paoli, that wife was a widow, those children were orphans!—Wouldn't
you like to go and beg your life of that widow and her children?”

This proposal, made by the Continental in the mere mockery of hate,
was taken in serious earnest by the horror-stricken Tory. He begged to
be taken to the widow and her children, to have the pitiful privilege of begging
his life. After a moment's serious thought, the patriot soldier consented;
he bound the Tory's arms yet tighter; placed him on the rock
again—led him up to the woods.—A quiet cottage, embosomed among trees,
broke on their eyes.

They entered that cottage. There, beside the desolate hearth-stone, sat
the widow and her children. She sat there a matronly woman of thirty
years, with a face faded by care, a deep dark eye, and long black hair hanging
in dishevelled flakes about her shoulders.

On one side was a dark-haired boy, of some six years—on the other a
little girl, one year younger, with light hair and blue eyes. The Bible—an
old and venerable volume—lay open on that mother's knee.

And then that pale-faced Tory flung himself upon his knees, confessed
that he had butchered her husband on the night of Paoli, but begged his life
at her hands!

“Spare me, for the sake of my wife, my child!”

He had expected that his pitiful moan would touch the widow's heart—
but not one relenting gleam softened her pale face.

“The Lord shall judge between us!” she said in a cold icy tone, that
froze the murderer's heart.—“Look! The Bible lays open upon my knee. I
will close that volume, and then this boy shall open it, and place his finger
at random upon a line, and by that line you shall live or die!”

This was a strange proposal, made in full faith of a wild and dark superstition
of the olden time.

For a moment the Tory kneeling there, livid as ashes, was wrapt in
thought. Then in a faltering voice, he signified his consent.

Raising her dark eyes to Heaven, the mother prayed the Great Father
to direct the finger of her son—she closed the Bible—she handed it to that
boy, whose young cheek reddened with loathing as he gazed upon his
father's murderer!

He took the Bible—opened its holy pages at random—placed his finger
on a verse.

Then there was silence!

Then that Continental soldier, who had sworn to avenge his brother's
death, stood there with dilating eyes and parted lips.

Then the culprit kneeling on the floor, with a face like discolored clay,
felt his heart leap to his throat.

Then in a clear, bold voice, the widow read this line from the Old Testament;—it
was short, yet terrible:

“That man shall die!”

Look! The brother springs forward to plunge a knife into the murderer's
heart, but the Tory, pinioned as he is, clings to the widow's knees!
He begs that one more trial may be made by the little girl, that child of five
years, with golden hair and laughing eyes.

The widow consents; there is an awful pause.

With a smile in her eye, without knowing what she does, that little girl
opens the Bible as it lays on her mother's knee—she turns her laughing face
away—she places her finger upon a line.

That awful silence grows deeper!

The deep-drawn breath of the brother, the broken gasps of the murderer,
alone disturb the silence.—The widow and dark-eyed boy are breathless.

That little girl, unconscious as she was, caught a feeling of awe from the
horror of the countenances around her, and stood breathless, her face turned
aside, her tiny fingers resting on that line of life or death.

At last gathering courage, the widow bent her eyes to the page, and read.
It was a line from the New Testament.

“Love your enemies.”

Ah! that moment was sublime!

Oh! awful Book of God, in whose dread pages we see Job talking face
to face with Jehovah, or Jesus waiting by Samaria's well, or wandering by
the waves of dark Galilee. Oh! awful Book, shining to-night, as I speak,
the light of that widow's home, the glory of that mechanic's shop, shining
where the world comes not, to look on the last night of the convict in his
cell, lightening the way to God, even over that dread gibbet. Oh! book
of terrible majesty and child-like love, of sublimity that crushes the soul into
awe, of beauty that melts the heart with rapture:—you never shone more
strangely beautiful than there, in the lonely cot of the Wissahikon, when
you saved that murderer's life!

For—need I tell you—that murderer's life was saved! That widow recognised
the finger of God—even the stern brother was awed into silence.

The murderer went his way.

Now look ye, how wonderful are the ways of Heaven!

That very night, as the widow sate by her lonely hearth—her orphans
by her side—sate there with crushed heart and hot eye-balls, thinking of
her husband, who now lay mouldering on the blood-drenched sod of Paoli
—there was a tap at the door.

She opened the door, and—that husband living, though covered with
many wounds, was in her arms!

He had fallen at Paoli—but not in death. He was alive; his wife lay
panting on his breast.

That night there was prayer in that wood-embowered Cot of the Wissahikon!

IV.—THE TEMPTATION OF WASHINGTON.

There are days in winter when the air is very soft and balmy as the
early days of summer, when, in fact, that glad maiden May seems to blow
her warm breath in the grim face of February, until the rough old warrior
laughs again.

It was a day like this that the morning sunshine was streaming over a
high rock, that frowns there, far above the Wissahikon.

A high rock—attainable only by a long, winding path—fenced in by the
trunks of giant pines, whose boughs, on the coldest day of winter, form a
canopy overhead.

This rock is covered with a carpet of evergreen moss.

And near this nook—this chamber in the forest, for it was nothing less—
sate an old man, separated from it by the trunks of the pines, whose boughs
concealed his form.

That old man had come here, alone, to think over his two sons, now
freezing at Valley Forge—for, though the father was a Tory, yet his
children were Continentals. He was a well-meaning man, but some half-crazy
idea about the Divine Right of the British Pope, George the Third,
to rule this Continent, and murder and burn as he pleased—lurked in his
brain, and kept him back from the camp of Washington.

And now, in this bright morning in February, he had come here, alone, to
think the matter over.

And while he was pondering this deep matter over, whether George the
Pope or George the Rebel was in the right—he heard the tramp of a war-steed
not far off, and, looking between the trunks of the pines, he saw a
man, of noble presence, dismount from his grey horse, and then advance
into the quiet nook of moss-carpeted rocks, encircled by giant pines.

—And now, leaving that aged Tory, to look upon this man for himself,
let us also look on him, with our own eyes.

As he comes through those thick boughs, you behold a man, more than
six feet high, with his kingly form enveloped in a coarse grey overcoat; a
chapean on his bold forehead—and beneath the skirts of that grey coat, you
may see the military boots and the end of a scabbard.

And who is this man of kingly presence, who comes here alone, to pace
this moss-covered rock, with drooped head and folded arms?

Come, my friends, and look upon him—let me show you—not this figure
of mist and frost-work, which some historians have called Washington—
but Washington, the living, throbbing, flesh and blood, Washington!—Yes,
Washington the man.

Look upon him, as he paces that moss-covered rock—see that eye burn,
that muscular chest heave under the folded arms.

Ah, he is thinking of Valley Forge! Of the bloody foot-prints in the
snow—of those three hideous figures that sit down in the huts of Valley
Forge together—Disease, Starvation, and Nakedness!

Look, as those dark thoughts crowd on his soul, he falls on his knees, he
prays the God of Heaven to take his life, as an offering for the freedom of
his native land!

And as that prayer startles the still woods, that grey coat falls open, and
discloses the blue and gold uniform—the epaulette and the sword-hilt.

Then the agony of that man, praying there in the silent woods—praying
for his country, now bleeding in her chains—speaks out, in the flashing of
the eye, in the beaded sweat, dripping from the brow!

—Ah, kings of the world, planning so cooly your schemes of murder,
come here, and look at George Washington, as he offers his life, a sacrifice
for his country!

Ah, George of England, British Pope, and good-natured Idiot, that you
are, now counting, in your royal halls how many more men it will take to
murder a few thousand peaceful farmers, and make a nation drink your tea,
come here to this rock of the Wissahikon, and see, King and Pope as you
are, George Washington in council with his God!—

My friends, I can never think of that man in the wilds of Wissahikon—
praying there, alone: praying for his country, with the deep agony in his
heart and on his brow, without also thinking of that dark night in Gethsemane,
when the blood-drops startled from the brow of Jesus, the Blessed
Redeemer, as he plead for the salvation of the world!

Now look! As Washington kneels there, on that moss-covered rock,
from those green boughs steps forth another form—tall as his own—clad in
a coarse grey coat, with the boots and scabbard seen below its skirts, with
the chapeau upon his brow.

That stranger emerges from the boughs—stands there unperceived, gazing
in silence upon the kneeling warrior.

A moment passes!

Look! Washington has risen to his feet—he confronts the stranger.

Now, as that stranger, with a slight bow, uncovers his forehead, tell me,
did you ever see a stronger or stranger resemblance between two men than
between these two, who now confront each other in silence, under the shade
of those dark pines?

The same heighth, breadth of chest, sinewy limbs, nay, almost the same
faces,—save that the face of the stranger, sharper in outline, lacks that calm
consciousness of a great soul, which stamps the countenance of Washington.

That resemblance is most strange—their muscular forms are clad in the
same coarse grey coat—their costume is alike—yet hold—

The stranger throws open his overcoat—you behold that hangman's

dress, that British uniform, flashing with gold and stars! Washington starts
back, and lays his hand upon his sword.

And as these two men, so strangely alike, meet there by accident, under
that canopy of boughs,—one wandering from Valley Forge, one from Philadelphia—let
me tell you at once, that the stranger is none other than the
Master Butcher of the Idiot-king—Sir William Howe.

Yes, there they meet, the one the impersonation of Freedom—the other
the tinselled lacquey of a Tyrant's Will!

We will listen to their conversation: it is brief, but important.

For a moment, the British General stood spell-bound before the man
whom he had crossed the ocean to entrap, and bring home; the Rebel, who
had lifted his hand against the Right Divine of the British Pope! To that
British General there was something awful about the soldier who could talk
with his God, as Washington had talked a moment ago.

“I cannot be mistaken,” at last said Sir William Howe; “I behold before
me the chieftain of the Rebel army, Mister Washington?”

Washington coldly bowed his head.

“Then this is a happy hour! For we together can give peace and freedom
to this land!”

At this word Washington started with surprise—advanced a step—and
then exclaimed—

“And who, sir, are you that thus boldly promise peace and freedom to
my country?”

“The commander of his Majesty's forces in America!” said Howe, advancing
along that wood-hidden rock towards Washington. “And oh, sir,
let me tell you that the king, my master, has heard of your virtues, which
alone dignifies the revolt with the name of a war, and it is to you he looks
for the termination of this most disastrous contest.”

Then Washington, whose pulse had never quickened before all the panoply
of British arms, felt his heart flutter in his bosom, as that great boon was
before his eyes—peace and freedom to his native land!

“Yes,” continued Howe, advancing another step, “my king looks to you
for the termination of this unnatural war. Let rebellion once be crushed—
let the royal name be finally established by your influences, and then, sir,
behold the gratitude of King George to Mister Washington.”

As he spoke, he placed in the hands of Washington a massive parchment—sealed
with the broad seal of England, signed with the manuel of
King George.

Washington took the parchment—opened it—read—his face did not
change a muscle.

And yet that parchment named Mister George Washington “George
Duke Washington, of Mount Vernon, our well-beloved servant, Viceroy
of America!”

Here was a boon for the Virginia planter—here was a title and here a

power for the young man, who was one day struggling for his life away
there amid floating ice on the dark Allegheny river.

For a moment, the face of Washington was buried in that parchment,
and then, in a low, deep voice, he spoke—

“I have been thinking,” he said, “of the ten thousand brave men who
have been massacred in this quarrel. I have been thinking of the dead of
Bunker Hill—Lexington—Quebec—Trenton—Yes, the dead of Saratoga—
Brandy wine—Germantown—”

“And,” cried Howe, startling forward, “you will put an end to this
unhappy quarrel?”

“And yor king,” continued Washington, with a look and tone that would
have cut into a heart of marble, “would have me barter the bones of the
dead for a ribbon and a title!”

And then—while Howe shrunk cowering back—that Virginia planter,
Washington, crushed that parchment into the sod, with the heel of his warrior
boot—Yes, trampled that title, that royal name, into one mass of
rags and dust.

“That is my answer to your king!”

And then he stood with scorn on his brow, and in his eye, his outstretched
arm pointing at that minion of King George.

Wasn't that a picture for the pencil of an angel? And now, that British
General, recovering from his first surprise, grew red as his uniform with
rage.

“Your head!” he gasped, clenching his hand, “your head will yet redden
the Traitor's block!”

Then Washington's hand sought his sword—then his fierce spirit awoke
within him—it was his first impulse to strike that braggart quivering into
the dust.

But in a moment he grew calm.

“Yours is a good and great king,” he said, with his usual stern tone.
“At first he is determined to sweep a whole Continent with but five thousand
men, but he soon finds that his five thousand men must swell to twenty-five
thousand before he can ever begin his work of murder. Then he
sacrifices his own subjects by thousands—and butchers peaceful farmers by
tens of thousands—and yet his march of victory is not even begun. Then,
if he conquers the capital city of the Continent, victory is sure! Behold!
the city is in his grasp, yet still the hosts of freedom defy him, even from
the huts of Valley Forge!

“And now, as a last resource, your king comes to the man whose head
yesterday was sought, with a high reward, to grace the gates of London—
he offers that Rebel a Dukedom—a vice regal sceptre! And yet that Rebel
tramples the Dukedom into the dust—that Rebel crushes into atoms the
name of such a king.”

Ah, never spaniel skulked from the kick of his master as that General

Howe cringed away from the presence of Washington—mounted his horse
—was gone!

One word with regard to the aged Tory, who beheld this scene from
yonder bushes, with alternate wonder, admiration, and fear.

That Tory went home—“I have seen George Washington at prayer,”
he said to his wife: “the man who can trample upon the name of a king,
as he did—pray to God as he prayed, that man cannot be a Rebel or a bad
man. To-morrow, I will join my sons at Valley Forge!”[2]

V.—WASHINGTON AS DUKE, KING AND REBEL.

We have seen Washington and Howe stand face to face on the cliff of
Wissahikon; we have seen the British General offer the American leader a
ducal title, a vice-regal sway as the reward of treason.

Now let us behold four scenes which arise to our minds from the contemplation
of this Legend. These scenes are fraught with a deep mystery,
a sublime and holy moral.

The first scene!

We stand in the streets of a magnificent city. A dense crowd darkens
the avenues leading to yonder palace. That palace, which rises over the
heads of the living mass, like a solitary mountain amid ocean waves.

There are bands of armed men around that palace—look! How the
sun glitters over the red uniforms, over the lines of bayonets, over the
thousand flags, that wave in the summer air.

And there, high over all, from the loftiest dome of that palace, one single
broad banner tosses slowly and lazily upon the breeze—look, its wide
shadow is cast upon the multitude below. That is the Red Cross Banner
of England.

And now every eye is fixed upon that palace door—a great potentate
will shortly come forth—the mob are anxious to look upon him, to shout
his name.

And now, as the drums roll out their thunder, as the voice of cannon bids
him welcome—he comes!

Yes, as women press forward, lifting their babes on high, eager to behold
him; as old men climb those trees, mad with anxiety, to catch but one
glimpse of his form, he comes, the Viceroy of America!

Yes, from that palace door, environed by guards and courtiers, fine gentlemen
and gay ladies, he comes, that man of kingly presence; he stands
there, for the moment, with the sun playing over his noble brow, glittering
along his vice-regal robes. How the thunder of the cannon, the clang of
drum and bugle, the hurrahs of the mob, go mingling up to Heaven in one
mad chorus. And that great prince standing there under the shadow of the
British banner; that is George, Duke Washington, Viceroy of America.

Yes, that is what Washington might have been, had he betrayed his
country.

Now we will change the scene:

We stand in the ante-chamber of the British King.

Here, in this lofty hall, adorned with trophies from all the world—trophies
from plundered Ireland—from ravaged Hindoostan—from down-trodden
America—here, under that Red Cross Banner, which like a canopy,
reddens over that ceiling; here are gathered a glittering party of noble lords
and ladies, anxious to behold a strange scene; the meeting between King
George and Duke Washington, that man who yesterday was a rebel, but
now having returned to his duty as a loyal subject, is about to be presented
to his master.

While all is suspense, two doors at opposite ends of that wide hall, are
flung open by gentlemen ushers; one announces “His Majesty!”

And a decrepit man with a vacant eye—a hanging lip—a gouty form,
mocked with purple robes, hobbles slowly forth.

That other gentleman in livery announces:—“His Grace, Washington,
Duke of Mount Vernon, Viceroy of America!”

And from that door comes a man of magnificent form, high bearing,
kingly look. He is clad—oh, shame!—in the scarlet uniform—his breast
waving with ribbons and glittering with stars.

And that noble man kneels in the centre of that crowd, kisses the gouty
hand of that King. The good-humored idiot murmurs something about forgiving
the rebel Washington, because that rebel has become a loyal subject,
and brought back a nation to the feet of the British King.

And there kneels Duke Washington, and there stands the Protestant
Pope of Britain.

—Had Washington accepted the parchment from General Howe, something
like this scene would have been the presentation at Court.

Or change the scene again:

What see you now? Independence Hall transformed into a monarch's
reception room, and there, surrounded by his courtiers, the crown on his
brow, stands George the First, King of America.

The glitter of arms flashes o'er Independence Square; the huzzas of the

mob burst into the sky; there is joy to-day in Philadelphia—the aristocracy
are glad—for George Washington, forsaking the fact of republican truth, has
yielded to the wishes of servile friends, yielded to the huzzas of the mob,
and while Independence Bell tolls the death of freedom, has taken to himself
a crown and a throne.

So, my friends, would one dark page in history have read, had not George
Washington been George Washington all his life.

And now let us look for a moment at the other side of the picture.

Suppose instead of the cry uttered by the watchman one night as the
State House struck one—“One o'clock and Cornwallis is taken!”—he had
shrieked forth—

“One o'clock, and George Washington is taken!”

Then would history have chronicled a scene like this:

One summer day an immense crowd gathered on Tyburn Hill. Yes,
that immense crowd spread far along the street, over the house tops, clung
to the trees, or darkened over the church steeples. That day London had
given forth its livery and its rags—its nobility and its rabble. St. Giles,
that foul haunt of pollution, sent its thieves and its beggars—St. James, the
home of royalty, sent its princes and its lords, to swell the numbers of this
vast crowd which now darkened far and wide over Tyburn Hill.

And in the centre of this wide theatre—whose canopy is yonder blue
heaven—whose walls are human faces—there glooms a scaffold covered
with drooping folds of black.

There, on that scaffold, stand three persons:—That grim figure, with
face muffled in crape, and the axe in his hand, that is the executioner.

There is a block by his side, and around that block is scattered a heap
of saw dust.

That saw dust has drunk the blood of men like Algernon Sidney—but
to-day will drink the blood of a greater rebel than he!

By the side of that executioner stands another figure in black, not a hangman,
but a priest, come to pray for the traitor.

And the third figure?

See, how he towers above priest and hangman, his blue uniform still enrobing
his proud figure—a calm resolution still sitting like a glory upon his
brow!

Can you tell me the name of this traitor?

Why you must be a stranger in London not to know his story. Why
the rabble in the street have it at their tongues' end—and those noble ladies,
looking from yonder windows—they shed some tears when they speak it.

That man standing on the scaffold is the great rebel, who was captured at
Yorktown—brought home in chains—tried in Parliament—sentenced to
death—and to-day he dies.

And now look, the priest approaches; he begs that calm-faced traitor to
repent of his treason before he dies,—to be reconciled to his King, the good

King George; to repent of his wicked deeds at Trenton, Monmouth, Germantown,
Brandy wine, and Valley Forge.

And as the priest doles out his store of set-phrases, look how that noble-looking
rebel pushes him aside with a quiet scorn.

Then, with one prayer to God, with one thought of his country, now
bleeding in her chains, he kneels—his head on the block.

How awfully still that crowd has become. The executioner draws near.
Look! he strips that blue coat from the rebel's shoulders—epaulettes, sword-belt
and sword—he tears them all from his manly form. With his vile
hands he breaks that sword in twain—for it is a rebel's sword.

Look! he feels the edge of the axe—still that noble rebel, but half dressed,
is kneeling there, in the light of the summer sun.

That axe glimmers into light.

Now hold your breath—oh, horror!—it falls.—There is a stream of
blood pouring down into the saw dust—there is a human head rolling on the
scaffold!

And now look again!

As that vast crowd breathe in gasps, the executioner, with crape over his
face, raises the head into light—and while the features yet quiver, while the
blood falls pattering down upon the mangled corse—

Hark—do you hear his brutal shout?

“Behold the head of George Washington, the rebel and traitor!”

Thank God! that page was never written in history! And who will
dare to say that this picture is too strongly drawn? Ah, my friends, had
my Lord Cornwallis been the victor at Yorktown, had the Continental
armies been crushed, then these streets would have been too narrow to contain
the gibbets erected by the British King.

Ah! those English lords and ladies—these English bards are now too
glad to lisp the praises of Washington.

But had the American armies been crushed, then would the head of
Washington have been nailed to the door-post of Independence Hall.

And now that you have seen what Washington might have been as the
Duke, the Viceroy, the King—or how dark would have been his fate as the
rebel, the crushed and convicted traitor—let us look at HIM AS HE IS.

Is. For he is not dead! For he will never die! For he lives—lives
at this hour, in a fuller and bolder life than ever.

Where'er there is a hearthstone in our land, there Washington shines its
patron saint.

Wherever a mother can teach her child some name, to write in its heart
and wear there forever next to the name of the Redeemer, that name is
Washington.

Yes, we are like those men who dig in the deep mines of Norway—
there in the centre of the earth forever burns one bright undying flame—no
one asks who first built the fire—but all know that it has burned for ages—

all, from father to son, make it a holy duty to heap fuel on that fire, and
watch it as though it were a god.

The name of Washington is that eternal fire built in every American
heart, and burning on when the night is darkest, and blazing brightest when
the gloom is most terrible.

So let that altar of flame burn and burn on forever, a living testimonial
of that man who too proud to be a Duke, or Viceroy, or King,—struck
higher and bolder in his ambition, struck at that place in the American heart
second in glory, and only second, be it spoken with awful reverence—to the
eternal Majesty of God.

VI.—THE HERO WOMAN.

In the shadows of the Wissahikon woods, not more than half a mile
from the Schuylkill, there stood in the time of the Revolution, a quaint old
fabric, built of mingled logs and stone, and encircled by a palisaded wall. It
had been erected in the earlier days of William Penn,—perhaps some years
before the great apostle of peace first trod our shores,—as a block-house, intended
for defence against the Indians.

And now it stood with its many roofs, its numerous chimneys, its massive
square windows, its varied front of logs and stone, its encircling wall,
through which admittance was gained by a large and stoutly-built gate: it
stood in the midst of the wood, with age-worn trees enclosing its veteran
outline on every side.

From its western window you might obtain a glimpse of the Schuylkill
waves, while a large casement in the southern front, commanded a view of
the winding road, as it sunk out of view, under the shade of thickly-clustered
boughs, into a deep hollow, not more than one hundred yards from the
mansion.

Here, from the southern casement, on one of those balmy summer days
which look in upon the dreary autumn, toward the close of November, a
farmer's daughter was gazing with dilating eyes and half-clasped hands.

Well might she gaze earnestly to the south, and listen with painful intensity
for the slightest sound! Her brothers were away with the army of
Washington, and her father, a grim old veteran—he stood six feet and three
inches in his stockings—who had manifested his love for the red-coat invaders,
in many a desperate contest, had that morning left her alone in the
old mansion, alone in this small chamber, in charge of some ammunition intended
for a band of brave farmers, about to join the hosts of freedom.
Even as she stood there, gazing out of the southern window, a faint glimpse
of sunlight from the faded leaves above, pouring over her mild face, shaded
by clustering brown hair, there, not ten paces from her side, were seven
loaded rifles and a keg of powder.

Leaning from the casement, she listened with every nerve quivering with
suspense, to the shouts of combatants, the hurried tread of armed men echoing
from the south.

There was something very beautiful in that picture! The form of the
young girl, framed by the square massive window, the contrast between the
rough timbers, that enclosed her, and that rounded face, the lips parting, the
hazel eye dilating, and the cheek warming and flushing with hope and fear;
there was something very beautiful in that picture, a young girl leaning from
the window of an old mansion, with her brown hair waving in glossy
masses around her face!

Suddenly the shouts to the south grew nearer, and then, emerging from
the deep hollow, there came an old man, running at full speed, yet every
few paces, turning round to fire the rifle, which he loaded as he ran. He
was pursued by a party of ten or more British soldiers, who came rushing
on, their bayonets fixed, as if to strike their victim down, ere he advanced
ten paces nearer the house.

On and on the old man came, while his daughter, quivering with suspense,
hung leaning from the window;—he reaches the block-house gate—
look! He is surrounded, their muskets are levelled at his head; he is
down, down at their feet, grappling for his life! But look again!—He
dashes his foes aside, with one bold movement he springs through the gate;
an instant, and it is locked; the British soldiers, mad with rage, gaze upon
the high wall of logs and stone, and vent their anger in drunken curses.

Now look to yonder window! Where the young girl stood a moment
ago, quivering with suspense, as she beheld her father struggling for his life,
now stands that old man himself, his brow bared, his arm grasping the rifle,
while his grey hairs wave back from his wrinkled and blood-dabbled face!
That was a fine picture of an old veteran, nerved for his last fight; a stout
warrior, preparing for his death-struggle.

Death-struggle? Yes!—for the old man, Isaac Wampole, had dealt too
many hard blows among the British soldiers, tricked, foiled, cheated them
too often to escape now! A few moments longer, and they would be reinforced
by a strong party of refugees; the powder, the arms, in the old
block-house, perhaps that daughter herself, was to be their reward. There
was scarcely a hope for the old man, and yet he had determined to make a
desperate fight.

“We must bluff off these rascals!” he said, with a grim smile, turning to
his child. “Now, Bess, my girl, when I fire this rifle, do you hand me
another, and so on, until the whole eight shots are fired! That will keep
them on the other side of the wall, for a few moments at least, and then we
will have to trust to God for the rest!”

Look down there, and see, a hand stealing over the edge of the wall!
The old man levels his piece—that British trooper falls back with a crushed
hand upon his comrades' heads!

No longer quivering with suspense, but grown suddenly firm, that young
girl passes a loaded rifle to the veteran's grasp, and silently awaits the
result.

For a moment all is silent below; the British bravoes are somewhat
loath to try that wall, when a stout old “Rebel,” rifle in hand, is looking
from yonder window! There is a pause—low, deep murmurs—they are
holding a council!

A moment is gone, and nine heads are thrust above the wall at once—
hark! One—two—three!—The old veteran has fired three shots, there are
three dying men, grovelling in the yard, beneath the shadow of the wall!

“Quick, Bess, the rifles!'

And the brave girl passes the rifles to her father's grasp; there are four
shots, one after the other; three more soldiers fell back, like weights of lead
upon the ground, and a single red-coat is seen, slowly mounting to the top of
the wall, his eye fixed upon the hall door, which he will force ere a moment
is gone!

Now the last ball is fired, the old man stands there, in that second-story
window, his hands vainly grasping for another loaded rifle! At this moment,
the wounded and dying band below, are joined by a party of some
twenty refugees, who, clad in their half-robber uniform, came rushing from
the woods, and with one bound are leaping for the summit of the wall!

“Quick, Bess, my rifle!”

And look there—even while the veteran stood looking out upon his foes,
the brave girl—for, slender in form, and wildly beautiful in face, she is a
brave girl, a Hero-Woman—had managed, as if by instinctive impulse, to
load a rifle. She handed it to her father, and then loaded another, and another!—Wasn't
that a beautiful sight? A fair young girl, grasping powder
and ball, with the ramrod rising and falling in her slender fingers!

Now look down to the wall again! The refugees are clambering over
its summit—again that fatal aim—again a horrid cry, and another wounded
man toppling down upon his dead and dying comrades!

But now look!—A smoke rises there, a fire blazes up around the wall;
they have fired the gate. A moment, and the bolt and the lock will be
burnt from its sockets—the passage will be free! Now is the fiery moment
of the old man's trial! While his brave daughter loads, he continues to
fire, with that deadly aim, but now—oh horror! He falls, he falls, with a
musquet ball driven into his breast — the daughter's outstretched arms
receive the father, as with the blood spouting from his wound, he topples
back from the window.

Ah, it is a sad and terrible picture!

That old man, writhing there, on the oaken floor, the young daughter
bending over him, the light from the window streaming over her face, over
her father's grey hairs, while the ancient furniture of the small chamber
affords a dim back-ground to the scene!

Now hark!—The sound of axes, at the hall door—shouts—hurrahs—
curses!

“We have the old rebel, at last!”

The old man raises his head at that sound; makes an effort to rise;
clutches for a rifle, and then falls back again, his eyes glaring, as the fierce
pain of that wound quivers through his heart.

Now watch the movements of that daughter. Silently she loads a rifle,
silently she rests its barrel against the head of that powder keg, and then,
placing her finger on the trigger, stands over her father's form, while the
shouts of the enraged soldiers come thundering from the stairs. Yes, they
have broken the hall door to fragments, they are in possession of the old
block-house, they are rushing toward that chamber, with murder in their
hearts, and in their glaring eyes! Had the old man a thousand lives, they
were not worth a farthing's purchase now.

Still that girl—grown suddenly white as the 'kerchief round her neck—
stands there, trembling from head to foot, the rifle in her hand, its dark
tube laid against the powder-keg.

The door is burst open—look there! Stout forms are in the doorway,
with musquets in their hands, grim faces stained with blood, glare into the
room.

Now, as if her very soul was coined into the words, that young girl with
her face pale as ashes, her hazel eye glaring with deathly light, utters this
short yet meaning speech—

“Advance one step into the room, and I will fire this rifle into the powder
there!”

No oath quivers from the lips of that girl, to confirm her resolution, but
there she stands, alone with her wounded father, and yet not a soldier dare
cross the threshold! Embrued as they are in deeds of blood, there is something
terrible to these men in the simple words of that young girl, who
stands there, with the rifle laid against the powder-keg.

They stood as if spell-bound, on the threshold of that chamber!

At last one bolder than the rest, a bravo, whose face is half-concealed in
a thick red beard, grasps his musquet, and levels it at the young girl's
breast!

“Stand back, or by —, I will fire!”

Still the girl is firm; the bravo advances a step, and then starts back.
The sharp “click” of that rifle falls with an unpleasant emphasis upon
his ear.

“Bess, I am dying,” gasps the old man, faintly extending his arms.
“Ha, ha, we foiled the Britishers! Come—daughter—kneel here; kneel
and say a prayer for me, and let me feel your warm breath upon my face,
for I am getting cold — O, dark and cold!”

Look!—As those trembling accents fall from the old man's tongue,
those fingers unloose their hold of the rifle—already the troopers are secure

of one victim, at least, a young and beautiful girl; for affection for her father,
is mastering the heroism of the moment—look! She is about to spring
into his arms! But now she sees her danger! again she clutches the rifle;
again—although her father's dying accents are in her ears—stands there,
prepared to scatter that house in ruins, if a single rough hand assails that
veteran form.

There are a few brief terrible moments of suspense. Then a hurried
sound, far down the mansion; then a contest on the stairs; then the echo
of rifle shot and the light of rifle blaze; then those ruffians in the doorway,
fall crushed before the strong arms of Continental soldiers. Then a wild
shriek quivers through the room, and that young girl—that Hero-Woman,
with one bound, springs forward into her brothers' arms, and nestles there,
while her dead father—his form yet warm—lays with fixed eyeballs upon
the floor.

VII.—KING GEORGE IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

One fine summer afternoon, in the year 1780, King George the Third,
of Great Britain, defender of the faith, as well as owner of a string of other
titles, as long as a hypocrite's prayer, took a quiet stroll through the dim
cloisters of Westminster Abbey.

It does not become me to picture that magnificent House of the Dead,
where Royalty sleeps its last slumber, as soundly as though it had never
butchered the innocent freeman, or robbed the orphan of her bread, while
poor Genius, starved and kicked while living, skulks into some corner, with
a marble monument above its tired head.

No! We will leave the description of Westminster Abbey to any one of
the ten thousand travellers, who depart from their own country—scarce
knowing whether Niagara is in New York or Georgia—and write us home
such delightful long letters about Kings and Queens, and other grand folks.

No! All we have to do is to relate a most singular incident, which happened
to George the Third, etc., etc., etc.—on this fine summer afternoon,
in the year of our Lord, 1780.

Do you see that long, gloomy aisle, walled in on either side by gorgeous
tombs, with the fretted roof above, and a mass of red, blue, purple and gold
pouring in on the marble pavement, through the discolored window-panes,
yonder? Does not the silence of this lonely aisle make you afraid? Do
you not feel that the dead are around, about, beneath, above—nay, in
the air?

After you have looked well at this aisle, with its splendid tombs, its marble
floor, its heavy masses of shade and discolored patches of light, let me
ask you to look upon the figure, which, at this moment, turns the corner
of yonder monument.

He stands aside from the light, yet you behold every outline of his face

and form. He is clad in a coat of dark purple velvet, faced with gold lace.
His breeches are of a pale blue satin; his stockings flesh-colored, and of
the finest silk. There is a jewelled garter around his right leg. His white
satin vest gleams with a single star. His shoes glitter with diamonds buckles,
he carries a richly-faced hat under his right arm. This is a very pretty
dress: and I am sure you will excuse me for being so minute, as I have
the greatest respect for grand folks.

This man—if it is not blasphemous to call such a great being a man—
seems prematurely old. His face does not strike you with its majesty; for
his forehead is low, the pale blue eyes bulge out from their sockets, the
lower lip hangs down upon the chin. Indeed, if this man was not so great
a being, you would call him an Idiot.

This, in fact, is George the Third, King of Great Britain, Ireland and
France; and owner of a string of other titles, who rules by divine right.

As he stands near yonder monument, a woman—dressed in faded black
—starts from behind that big piece of sculptured marble, on which “Mercy”
appears, in the act of bending from the skies, and flings herself at the feet
of the King.

“Mercy!” she cries, with uplifted hands.

“What—what—what?” stammers the good King. “What's all this?”

“My son committed robbery, some two months ago. He robbed on the
highway to give me bread. I was sick—famished—dying. He has been
condemned to death, and to-morrow he dies. Mercy for the widow's son?”

“What—what—what? Eh? What's this? How much did he steal?”

“Only ten shillings! Only ten shillings! For the love of God, mercy?”

The good King looked upon the wan face and pleading eyes of that poor
woman, and said, hurriedly—

“I cannot pardon your son. If I pardon the thief, I may as well pardon
the forger and murderer.—There—go, good woman: I can do nothing
for you.”

The good King turned away, leaving the insensible form of the widow
stretched out upon the marble floor. He would have pardoned her boy,
but there were some two or three hundred crimes punishable with death,
from the petty offence of killing a man up to the enormous blasphemy of
shooting a rabbit on a rich man's estate. Therefore, King George could not
pardon one of these crimes, for, do you mark, the hangman once put down,
there is an end of all law.

The King, I like to call grand people by their titles, the good King—I
also like to call him good, because, do you see, the Archbishop of Canterbury
called him so, in his sermon, every Sunday morning—the good King
turned away, leaving the poor widow insensible on the floor.

This little incident had somewhat excited him, so he sank down upon the
corner of a marble slab, and bent his head upon his hand, and began to think.

All at once, he felt seized by invisible hands, and borne, with the speed

of light, through the air and over a long sweep of ocean waves. His journey
was but for a moment, yet, it seemed to him, that he had traversed thousands
of miles. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself standing by a
road-side, opposite a beautiful little cottage, which, with a garden in front,
smiled upon the view from a grove of orchard trees. A young woman with
a little boy by her side and a baby in her arms, stood in the cottage door.

The King could not admire that cottage too much, with its trees and
flowers, and, as for that rosy-cheeked woman, in the linsey gown, he was
forced to admit to himself that he had never seen anything half so beautiful,
even in the Royal family.

While the King was looking upon the young woman and her children, he
heard a strange noise, and, turning his head, he beheld a man in a plain
farmer's coat, with a gun in his hand, tottering up the highway. His face
was very pale, and as he walked tremblingly along, the blood fell, drop by
drop, from a wound near his heart, upon the highway dust.

The man stumbled along, reached the garden gate, and sprang forward,
with a bound, towards the young woman and her children.

“Husband!” shrieked the young woman.

“Father!” cried the little boy.

Even the baby lifted its little hands, and greeted in its infant tones that
wounded man.

Yet the poor farmer lay there at the feet of his wife, bleeding slowly to
death. The young woman knelt by his side, kissing him on the forehead,
and placing her hand over the wound, as if to stop the blood, but it was in
vain. The red current started from his mouth.

The good King lifted his eyes. The groans of the dying man, the shrieks
of the wife, the screams of the little children, sounded like voices from the
dead. At last his feelings overcome him—

“Who,” he shouted, “who has done this murder?”

As he spoke—as if in answer to his question—a stout, muscular man
came running along the road, in the very path lately stained with the blood
of the wounded man. He was dressed in a red coat, and in his right hand
he grasped a musquet, with a bayonet dripping blood.

“I killed that fellow,” he said in a rude tone, “and what have you got
to say to it?”

“Did he ever harm you?” said the King.

“No—I never saw him before this hour!”

“Then why did you kill him?”

“I killed him for eight-pence,” said the man, with a brutal sneer.

The good King raised his hands in horror, and called on his God to pity
the wretch!

“Killed a man for eight-pence! Ah, you wretch! Don't you hear the
groans of his wife?—the screams of his children?”

“Why, that hain't nothin',” said the man in the red coat. “I've killed

many a one to-day, beside him. I'm quite used to it, though burnin' 'em
alive in their houses is much better fun.”

The King now foamed with righteous scorn.

`Wretch!” he screamed, “where is your master, this devil in human
shape, who gives you eight-pence for killing an innocent man?”

“Oh, he's a good ways over the water,” said the man. “His name is
George the Third. He's my King. He—”

The good King groaned.

“Why—why,” said he, slowly, “I must be in America. That dying
man must be a—Rebel. You must be one of my soldiers—”

“Yes,” said the man in the red coat, with a brutal grin; “you took me
out o' Newgate, and put this pretty dress on my back. That man whom I
killed was a farmer: he sometimes killed sheep for a dollar a day. I'm
not quite so well off as him, for I kill men, and only get eight-pence a day.
I say, old gentleman, couldn't you raise my wages?”

But the King did not behold the brute any longer. He only saw that
the young woman and her children, kneeling around the body of the dead
man.

Suddenly those invisible hands again grasped his Royal person, and bore
him through the air.

When he again opened his eyes, he beheld a wide lawn, extending in the
light of the December moon. That lawn was white with snow. From its
centre arose an old-time mansion, with grotesque ornaments about its roof,
a hall door defended by pillars, and steps of stone, surmounted by two lions
in marble. All around the mansion, like sentinels on their midnight watch,
stood scattered trees, their bare limbs rising clearly and distinctly into the
midnight sky.

While the King was wrapped in wonder at the sight—behold! A band
of women, a long and solemn train, came walking over the lawn, their long
black gowns trailing in the winter snow.

It was a terrible sight to see those wan faces, upturned to the cold moon,
but oh! the chaunt they sung, those spectral women, as they slowly wound
around the lawn: it chilled the King's blood.

For that chaunt implored Almighty God to curse King George of England
for the murder of their husbands—fathers—brothers!

Then came a band of little children, walking two by two, and raising
their tiny hands in the light of the moon. They also rent the air with a
low, deep chaunt, sung in their infantile tones.

George, the King, listened to that chaunt with freezing blood, with trembling
limbs. He knew not why, but he joined in that song in spite of himself,
he sung their hymn of woe.

“George of England, we curse thee in the sight of God, for the murder
of our fathers! We curse thee with the orphan's curse!”

This was their chaunt. No other words they sung. But this simple
hymn they sung again and again, raising their little hands to God.

“Oh, this is hard!” shrieked King George. “I could bear the curse of
warriors—nay, even the curse of the Priest at the Altar! But to be cursed
by widows—to be cursed by little children—ah—”

The good King fell on his knees.

“Where am I!” he shrieked—“and who are these?”

A voice from the still winter air answered—

“You are on the battle-field. These are the widows and orphans of the
dead of Germantown.”

“But did I murder their fathers? Their husbands?”

The voice replied—

“You did! Too cowardly or too weak to kill them with your own hand,
you hired your starving peasants, your condemned felons to do it for you!”

The King grovelled in the snow and beat his head against the frozen
ground. He felt that he was a murderer: he could feel the brand of Cain
blistering upon his brow.

Again he was taken up—again borne through the air.

Where was he now? He looked around, and by the light of that December
moon, struggling among thick clouds, he beheld a scattered village of
huts, extending along wintry hills. The cold wind cut his cheek and froze
his blood

An object at his feet arrested his eye. He stooped down: examined it
with a shudder. It was a man's footsteps, printed in blood.

The King was chilled to the heart by the cold; stupified with horror at
the sight of this strange footstep. He said to himself, I will hasten to yonder
hut; I will escape from the wind and cold, and the sight of that horrid
footstep.

He started toward the village of huts, but all around him those bloody
footsteps in the snow seemed to gather and increase at every inch of his
way.

At last he reached the first hut, a rude structure of logs and mud. He
looked in the door, and beheld a naked man, worn to a skeleton, stretched
prostrate on a heap of straw.

“Ho! my friend,” said the King, as though a voice spoke in him, without
his will, “why do you lie here, freezing to death, when my General,
Sir William Howe, at Philadelphia yonder, will give you such fine clothes
and rich food?”

The freezing man looked up, and muttered a few brief words, and then
fell back—dead!

“Washington is here!” was all he said, ere he died.

In another hut, in search of shelter, peeped the cold and hungry King.
A rude fellow sate warming his hands by a miserable fire, over which an

old kettle was suspended. His face was lean and his cheeks hollow, nay,
the hands which he held out towards the light, looked like the hands of a
skeleton.

“Ho! my friend—what cheer?” said the King. “I am hungry—have
you any thing to eat?”

“Not much of any account,” replied the rude fellow; “yesterday I eat
the last of my dog, and to-day I'm goin' to dine on these mocassins: don't
you hear 'em bilin'?”

“But,” said the King, “there's fine living at Philadelphia, in the camp of
Sir William. Why do you stay here to starve?”

“Was you ever to school?” said the starved Rebel. “Do you know
how to spell L-i-b-e-r-t-y?”

The good King passed on. In the next hut lay a poor wretch dying of
that loathsome plague—small-pox.

“Come,” said the King, or rather the voice in him spoke, “away to
Philadelphia!”

“These hills are free!” cried the poor wretch, lifting his loathsome face
into light; then, without a moan, he laid down to his fever and starvation
again.

At last, his Royal brain confounded by the words of these strange men
the King entered a two-story stone house, which arose in the glen, between
the hills, near the brink of a dark river. Slowly entered the King, attracted
by the sound of a voice at prayer along a dark passage, into a small chamber,
in which a light was burning.

A man of noble visage was on his knees, praying to God in earnest
tones—

“We will endure disease, starvation, death, but, in thy name, oh, God!
we will never give up our arms! The tyrant, with murder in his heart,
may darken our plains with his hirelings, possess our cities, but still we
thank thee, oh, God! that the mountains are free, that where the panther
howls, we may yet find a home for the brave.

“Hold, hold!” shouted the voice within the King, as the terror-stricken
Monarch rushed into the room. “Washington do not pray against me! I
can bear to be called a murderer—a butcher of orphans, but that you—you,
so calm amid starvation, nakedness, disease—you whom I thought hunted
long ago, like a wolf before the hounds—that you should call God's vengeance
on my head—that I cannot bear! Washington, do not pray
against me!”

And he flung himself at the feet of the Hunted Rebel, and besought his
mercy with trembling hands, extended in a gesture of supplication.

“It was I that butchered your farmers! It was I that tore the husband
from the wife, the father from his child! It was I that drove these freemen
to the huts of Valley Forge, where they endure the want of bread, fire, the
freezing cold, the loathsome small-pox, rather than take my gold—it was I!

Rebel I am at your feet! Have mercy! I, George by the Grace of God,
Defender of the Faith, Head of the Church, fling myself at your feet, and
beg your pity! For I am a murderer—the murderer of thousands and tens
of thousands!”

He started tremblingly forward, but in the action, that room, that solemn
face and warrior form of the Rebel, passed away.

George the King awoke: he had been dreaming. He woke with the
cold sweat on his brow; a tremor like the ague upon his limbs.

The sun was setting, and his red light streamed in one gaudy blaze
through yonder stained window.—All was terribly still in Westminster
Abbey.

The King arose, he rushed along the aisles, seeking with starting eyes
for the form of the poor widow. At last he beheld her, shrouded in her
faded garments, leaning for support against a marble figure of Mercy.

The King rushed to her, with outspread hands.

“Woman, woman!” he shrieked, “I pardon your son!”

He said nothing more, he did not even wait to receive her blessings, but
rushing with trembling steps toward the door, he seized the withered old
Porter, who waited there, by the hand

“Do you see it in my face?” he whispered—“don't you see the brand
—Murder—here?”

He sadly laid his hand against his forehead, and passed through the door,
on his way.

“The poor King's gone mad!” said the old Porter. “God bless his
Majesty!”

In front of that dim old Abbey, with its outlines of grandeur and gloom,
waited the Royal carriage, environed by guards. Two men advanced to
meet the King—one clad in the attire of a nobleman, with a heavy face and
dull eye; and the other in the garb of a Prelate, with mild blue eyes and
snow-white hair.

“I hope your Majesty's prayers, for the defeat of the Rebels, will be
smiled upon by Heaven!”

Thus with a smile and gently-waving hand, spoke my Lord, the Archbishop
of Canterbury.

“O, by Christmas next, we'll have this Washington brought home in
chains!”

Thus with a gruff chuckle spoke my Lord North, Prime Minister of
England.

The good King looked at them both with a silly smile, and then pressed
his finger against his forehead.

“What—what—what? Do you see it here? Do, you see it? It burns!
Eh? Murderer!”

With that silly smile the King leaped in the carriage. Hurrah! How

the mob shouted—how the swords of the guards gleamed on high—how
gaily the chariot wheels dashed along the streets—hurrah!

Let us swell the shout, but—

That night a rumor crept through all London, that King George was
mad again!

VIII.—VALLEY FORGE.

Hidden away there in a deep glen, not many miles from Valley Forge, a
quaint old farm house rose darkly over a wide waste of snow.

It was a cold dark winter night, and the snow began to fall—when from
the broad fireplace of the old farm house, the cheerful blaze of massive logs
flashed around a wide and spacious room.

Two persons sat there by that fire, a father and child. The father, who
sits yonder, with a soldier's belt thrown over his farmer's dress, is a man
of some fifty years, his eyes bloodshot, his hair changed to an untimely grey,
his face wrinkled and hallowed by care, and by dissipation more than care.

And the daughter who sits in the full light of the blaze opposite her father
—a slenderly formed girl of some seventeen years, clad in the coarse linsey
skirt and kerchief, which made up the costume of a farmer's daughter, in
the days of the Revolution.

She is not beautiful—ah, no!

Care—perhaps that disease, consumption, which makes the heart grow
cold to name—has been busy with that young face, sharpened its outlines,
and stamped it with a deathly paleness.

There is no bloom on that young cheek. The brown hair is laid plainly
aside from her pale brow. Then tell me, what is it you see, when you gaze
in her face?

You look at that young girl, you see nothing but the gleam of two large
dark eyes, that burn into your soul.

Yes, those eyes are unnaturally large and dark and bright—perhaps consumption
is feeding their flame.

And now as the father sits there, so moody and sullen, as the daughter
sits yonder, so sad and silent and pale, tell me, I pray you, the story of
their lives.

That farmer, Jacob Manheim, was a peaceful, a happy man, before the
Revolution. Since the war, he has become drunken and idle—driven his
wife broken-hearted to the grave—and worse than all, joined a band of Tory
refugees, who scour the land as dead of night, burning and murdering as
they go.

To-night, at the hour of two, this Tory band will lie in wait, in a neighboring
pass, to attack and murder the “Rebel” Washington, whose starving
soldiers are yonder in the huts of Valley Forge.

Washington on his lonely journeys is wont to pass this farm house;—

the cut-throats are there in the next chamber, drinking and feasting, as they
wait for two o clock at night.

And the daughter, Mary—for her name was Mary; they loved that name
in the good old times—what is the story of her brief young life?

She had been reared by her mother, now dead and gone home, to revere
this man Washington, who to-night will be attacked and murdered—to revere
him next to God. Nay, more: that mother on her death-bed joined the
hands of this daughter, in solemn betrothal with the hands of a young partisan
leader, Harry Williams, who now shares the crust and the cold of
Valley Forge.

Well may that maiden's eye flash with unnatural brightness, well may
her pale face gather a single burning flush, in the centre of each cheek!

For yesterday afternoon, she went four miles, over roads of ice and snow,
to tell Captain Williams the plot of the refugees. She did not reach Valley
Forge until Washington had left on one of his lonely journeys; so this night,
at twelve, the partizan captain will occupy the rocks above the neighboring
pass, to “trap the trappers” of George Washington.

Yes, that pale slender girl, remembering the words of her dying mother,
had broken through her obedience to her father, after a long and bitter struggle.
How dark that struggle in a faithful daughter's heart! She had
betrayed his plots to his enemies—stipulating first for the life, the safety of
her traitor-father.

And now as father and child are sitting there, as the shouts of the Tory
refugees echo from the next chamber—as the hand of the old clock is on the
hour of eleven—hark! There is the sound of horses' hoofs without the
farm house—there is a pause—the door opens—a tall stranger, wrapped in
a thick cloak, white with snow, enters, advances to the fire, and in brief
words solicits some refreshment and an hour's repose.

Why does the Tory Manheim start aghast at the sight of that stranger's
blue and gold uniform—then mumbling something to his daughter about
“getting food for the traveller,” rush wildly into the next room, where his
brother Tories are feasting?

Tell me, why does that young girl stand trembling before the tall stranger,
veiling her eyes from that calm face, with its blue eye and kindly smile?

Ah—if we may believe the legends of that time, few men, few warriors,
who dared the terror of battle with a smile, could stand unabashed before
the solemn presence of Washington.

For it was Washington, exhausted, with a long journey—his limbs stiffened
and his face numbed with cold—it was the great “Rebel” of Valley
Forge, who returning to camp sooner than his usual hour, was forced by
the storm to take refuge in the farmer's house, and claim a little food and
an hour's repose at his hands.

In a few moments, behold the Soldier, with his cloak thrown off, sitting

at that oaken table, partaking of the food, spread out there by the hands of
the girl, who now stands trembling at his shoulder.

And look! Her hand is extended as if to grasp him by the arm—her lips
move as if to warn him of his danger, but make no sound. Why all this
silent agony for the man who sits so calmly there?

One moment ago, as the girl, in preparing the hasty supper, opened
yonder closet door, adjoining the next room, she heard the low whispers of
her father and the Tories; she heard the dice box rattle, as they were casting
lots, who should stab George Washington in his sleep!

And now, the words: “Beware, or this night you die!” trembles half-formed
upon her lips, when the father comes hastily from that room and
hushes her with a look.

“Show the gentleman to his chamber, Mary!”—(how calmly polite a
murderer can be!)—“that chamber at the head of the stairs, on the left. On
the left, you mind!”

Mary takes the light, trembling and pale. She leads the soldier up the
oaken stairs. They stand on the landing, in this wing of the farm-house,
composed of two rooms, divided by thick walls from the main body of the
mansion. On one side, the right, is the door of Mary's chamber; on the
other, the left, the chamber of the soldier—to him a chamber of death.

For a moment, Mary stands there trembling and confused. Washington
gazes upon that pale girl with a look of surprise. Look! She is about to
warn him of his danger, when, see there!—her father's rough face appears
above the head of the stairs.

“Mary, show the gentleman into the chamber on the left. And look ye,
girl—it's late—you'd better go into your own room and go to sleep.”

While the Tory watches them from the head of the stairs, Washington
enters the chamber on the left, Mary the chamber on the right.

An hour passes. Still the storm beats on the roof—still the snow drifts
on the hills. Before the fire, in the dim old hall of that farm-house, are
seven half-drunken men, with that tall Tory, Jacob Manheim, sitting in their
midst; the murderer's knife in his hand. For the lot had fallen upon him.
He is to go up stairs and stab the sleeping man.

Even this half-drunken murderer is pale at the thought—how the knife
trembles in his hand—trembles against the pistol barrel. The jeers of his
comrades rouse him to the work,—the light in one hand, the knife in the
other, he goes up the stairs—he listens!—first at the door of his daughter's
chamber on the right, then at the door of the soldier's chamber on the left.
All is still. Then he places the light on the floor—he enters the chamber
on the left—he is gone a moment—silence!—there is a faint groan! He
comes forth again, rushes down the stairs, and stands there before the fire,
with the bloody knife in his hand.

“Look!” he shrieks, as he scatters the red drops over his comrades'

faces, over the hearth, into the fire—“Look! it is his blood—the traitor
Washington!”

His comrades gather round him with yells of joy: already, in fancy, they
count the gold which will be paid for this deed, when lo! that stair door
opens, and there, without a wound, without even the stain of a drop of blood,
stands George Washington, asking calmly for his horse.

“What!” shrieked the Tory Manheim, “can neither steel nor bullet
harm you? Are you a living man? Is there no wound about your heart?
no blood upon your uniform?”

That apparition drives him mad. He starts forward—he places his hands
tremblingly upon the arms, upon the breast of Washington! Still no wound.
Then he looks at the bloody knife, still clutched in his right hand, and stands
there quivering as with a death spasm.

While Washington looks on in silent wonder, the door is flung open, the
bold troopers from Valley Forge throng the room, with the gallant form and
bronzed visage of Captain Williams in their midst. At this moment the
clock struck twelve. Then a horrid thought crashes like a thunderbolt upon
the brain of the Tory Manheim. He seizes the light—rushes up stairs—
rushes into the room of his daughter on the right. Some one had just risen
from the bed, but the chamber was vacant. Then towards that room on
the left, with steps of leaden heaviness.—Look! how the light quivers in
his hand! He pauses at the door; he listens! Not a sound—a stillness
like the grave. His blood curdles in his veins! Gathering courage, he
pushes open the door. He enters. Towards that bed through whose curtains
he struck so blindly a moment ago! Again he pauses—not a sound
—a stillness more terrible than the grave. He flings aside the curtains—

There, in the full light of the lamp, her young form but half covered,
bathed in her own blood—there lay his daughter, Mary!

Ah, do not look upon the face of the father, as he starts silently back,
frozen to stone; but in this pause of horror listen to the mystery of this
deed!

After her father had gone down stairs, an hour ago, Mary silently stole
from the chamber on the right. Her soul shaken by a thousand fears, she
opened the door on the left, and beheld Washington sitting by a table on
which were spread a chart and a Bible. Then, though her existence was
wound up in the act, she asked him, in a tone of calm politeness to take the
chamber on the opposite side. Mary entered the chamber which he left.

Can you imagine the agony of that girl's soul, as lying on the bed intended
for the death-couch of Washington, she silently awaited the knife,
although that knife might be clenched in a father's hand.

And now that father, frozen to stone, stood there, holding the light in one
hand, the other still clutching the red knife.

There lay his child, the blood streaming from that wound in her arm—
her eyes covered with a glassy film.

“Mary!” shrieked the guilty father—for robber and Tory as he was, he
was still a father. “Mary!” he called to her, but that word was all he
could say.

Suddenly, she seemed to wake from that stupor. She sat up in the bed
with her glassy eyes. The strong hand of death was upon her. As she
sat there, erect and ghastly, the room was thronged with soldiers. Her
lover rushed forward, and called her by name. No answer. Called again
—spoke to her in the familiar tones of olden time—still no answer. She
knew him not.

Yes, it was true—the strong hand of death was upon her.

“Has he escaped?” she said, in that husky voice.

“Yes!” shrieked the father. “Live, Mary, only live, and to-morrow I
will join the camp at Valley Forge.”

Then that girl—that Hero-Woman—dying as she was, not so much from
the wound in her arm, as from the deep agony which had broken the last
chord of life, spread forth her arms, as though she beheld a form floating
there above her bed, beckoning her away. She spread forth her arms as
if to enclose that Angel form.

“Mother!” she whispered—while there grouped the soldiers—there,
with a speechless agony on his brow stood the lover—there, hiding his face
with one hand, while the other grasped the light crouched the father—that
light flashing over the dark bed, with the white form in its centre—
“Mother, thank God! For with my life I have saved him —”

Look, even as starting up on that bloody couch, she speaks the half-formed
word, her arms stiffen, her eyes wide open, set in death,glare in her
father's face!

She is dead! From that dark room her spirit has gone home!

That half-formed word, still quivering on the white lips of the Hero-Woman—that
word uttered in a husky whisper, choked by the death-rattle—
that word was—“Washington!”[3]

IX.—THE MANSION ON THE SCHUYLKILL.

Gliding one summer day over the smooth bosom of the Schuylkill, with
the white sail of my boat, swelling with the same breeze that ruffled the
pines of Laurel Hill, I slowly emerged from the shadow of an old bridge,
and all at once, a prospect of singular beauty lay before me, in the beams
of the setting sun.

A fine old mansion crowned the summit of a green hill, which arose on
the eastern shore, its grassy breast bared to the sunset glow. A fine old
mansion of dark grey stone, with its white pillars looking out from among
green trees. From the grassy bosom of the hill, many a white statue arose,
many a fountain dashed its glittering drops into light. There was an air
of old-time elegance and ease about that mansion, with its green lawn sloping
gently down—almost to the river's brink, its encircling grove of magnificent
trees, its statues and fountains. It broke on your eye, as you emerged from
the arches of the old bridge, like a picture from Italy.

Yet from the porch of that old-time mansion, a fairer view bursts upon
your eye. The arches of the bridges—one spanning the river in all the
paint and show of modern fancy, the other gloomy as night and the grave—
the sombre shades of Laurel Hill, hallowed by the white tombs of the dead,
with the Gothic Chapel rising among dark green trees—the Schuylkill, extending
far beyond bridge and Cemetry, its broad bosom enclosed on every
side by hills and trees, resting like some mountain lake in the last glow of
the setting sun—a fairer view does not bless the traveller's eye from the
Aroostook to the Rio Grande.

There is a freshness in the verdure—a beauty in that still sheet of water,
a grandeur in yonder sombre pines, waving above the rocks of Laurel Hill
—a rural magnificence in the opposite shore of the river, rising in one massive
hill, green with woods and gay with cottage and mansion,—a beauty, a
grandeur, a magnificence that at once marks the Falls of Schuylkill with an
ever-renewing novelty, an unfading charm.

The view is beautiful in the morning, when the pillars of the bridge, fling
their heavy shadows over the water; when the tree tops of Laurel Hill, undulate
to the breeze in masses of green and gold, while the Schuylkill rests
in the shade.

Beautiful at noon, when from the thick foliage on the opposite shore,
half-way up the massive hill, arises the blue smoke of the hidden “God of
Steam,” winding slowly upward to the cloudless sky.

Beautiful at twilight, when flashes of purple and gold change the view
every moment, and impart a gorgeous beauty, which does not cease when
the spires of Laurel Hill glow in the first beam of the uprising moon.

Ah, night, deep and solemn—the great vault above—below, and around,

the river glistening in the moonbeam, the bridges one mingled mass of light
and darkness—Laurel Hill a home for the dead in truth, with its white monuments
glaring fitfully into light, between the branches of the trees. There
is a sad and solemn beauty, resting on this scene at night.

It was at night, that a Legend of this old-time mansion, rushed upon my
soul.

I stood on the porch; and the bridge, the Cemetry melted all at once
away. I was with the past—back sixty years and more, into the dim
arcades of time. Nor bridge, nor cemetry were there, but in place of the
cemetry, one sombre mass of wild wood; where the bridge now spans the
river, a water-fall dashed and howled among rugged rocks. No blue smoke
of steam engine, then wound up from the green trees. A man who would
have dreamed of such a thing, would have been imprisoned as a madman.

Yet a strange wild beauty, rested upon this mansion, this river, these
hills in the days of the Revolution. A beauty that was born of luxuriant
forests, a river dashing tumultuously over its bed of rocks, hills lifting their
colossal forms into the sky. A beauty whose fields and flowers were not
crushed by the Juggernaut, “Improvement;” whose river all untramelled,
went singing on its way until it kissed the Delaware.

It was a night in the olden-time, when Washington held the huts and hills
of Valley Forge, while Sir William Howe enjoyed the balls and banquets
of Philadelphia.

A solitary light burned in the mansion—a tall, formal wax candle—casting
its rays around a quaint old fashioned room. A quaint, old fashioned
room, not so much remarkable for its dimensions, as for the air of honest
comfort, which hung about the high-backed mahogany chairs, the oaken
wainscot, the antique desk, standing in one corner; a look of honest comfort
which glowed brightly from the spacious fire-place, where portly logs of
hickory sent up their mingled smoke and flame.

In front of that fire were three persons, whose attitude and gestures presented
a strange, an effective picture. On the right, in a spacious arm-chair,
lined with cushions, sat a man of some seventy years, his spare form
wrapped in a silk dressing gown, his grey hair waving over his prominent
brow to his shoulders, while his blue eyes, far sunken in their sockets,
lighted up a wan and withered face.

At his feet, knelt a beautiful woman, whose form swelling with the full
outlines of mature womanhood, was enveloped in a flowing habit of easy
folds and snow-white hue. Around that face, glowing with red on the
cheek and lip, and marble-white on the brow, locks of golden hair fell
in soft undulations, until they floated around the neck and bosom. Her
blue eyes—beaming with all a woman's love for a trembling old man, that
man her father—were fixed upon his face with a silent anxiety and
tenderness.

The old man's gaze was rivetted to the countenance of the third figure in
this scene, who sat opposite, on the left side of the fire.

A man of some fifty years, with strongly marked features, thick grey eye-brows,
hooked nose like an eagle's beak, thin lips and prominent chin.
His head was closely enveloped in a black silk cap, which concealing his
hair, threw his wrinkled forehead boldly into the light. A gown or tunic
of faded dark velvet, fell from his shoulders to his knees. His head was
bent down, while his eyes rested upon the uncouth print of an old volume,
which lay open across his knees.

That volume was intituled—“Ye Laste Secret of Cornelius Agrippa,
now first translated into English. Anno. Dom. 1516.

The man who perused its pages, was none other than the “Astrologer”
or “Conjurer” who at this time of witchcraft and superstition, held a
wonderful influence over the minds of the people, in all the country, about
Philadelphia.

He had been summoned hither to decide a strange question. Many
years ago, while dwelling in the backwoods of Pennsylvania, with his
young wife, Gerald Morton—so the old man of seventy was named—had
been deprived of his only son, a boy of four years, by some unaccountable
accident. The child had suddenly disappeared. Years passed—a daughter
was born—the wife died, but no tidings reached the father's ears of his
lost son.

To night a strange infatuation had taken possession of his brain.

His son was living! He was assured of this, by a voice that whispered
to his soul.

He was doomed to die, ere morning dawned. Ere he gave up the
Ghost, he wished to learn something of his child, and so—with a superstition
shared by the intelligent as well as the illiterate of that time—he had
summoned the Astrologer.

“The child was born before midnight January 12, 1740?” said the
Astrologer. “Four years from the night of his birth, he disappeared?”

The old man bowed his head in assent.

“I have cast his Horoscope,” said the Astrologer. “By this paper, I
know that your son lives, for it threatens his life, with three eras of danger.
The first, Jan. 12, 1744. The second, Jan. 12, 1778. The third—
a date unknown—”

“He is in danger, then to night,” said Mr. Morton; “For to night is the
Twelfth of January, 1778?”

The Astrologer rose and placed a chafing dish on the carpet, near the
antique desk, which was surmounted by an oval mirror. Scattering spices
and various unknown compounds upon the dish, the Astrologer applied a
light, and in a moment, one portion of the room, was enveloped in rolling
clouds of fragrant smoke.

“Now Amable,” said he, in a meaning tone, “This charm can be tried

by a pure virgin and by her alone. Would'st thou see thy brother, at this
moment? Enter this smoke and look within the mirror: thou shalt behold
him!”

A deep silence prevailed. Gerald Morton leaned forward with parted
lips. Amable arose; clasping her hands across her bosom, she passed toward
the mirror, and her form was lost in the fragrant smoke.

A strange smile passed over the Astrologer's face. Was it of scorn or
malice, or merely an expression of no meaning?

“What dost thou see?”

A tremulous voice, from the bosom of the smoke-cloud, gave answer.

“A river! A rock! A mansion!”

“Look again—what seest thou now?”

The old man half-rose from his arm-chair. That strange smile deepened
over the Astrologer's face.

A moment passed—no answer!

All was still as the grave.

Amable did not answer, for the sight which she beheld, took from her,
for a moment, the power of utterance. She beheld her father's mansion,
rising above the Schuylkill, the river and the rocks of Laurel Hill white
with snow. The silver moon from a clear cold sky shone over all. Along
the ascent to the mansion, came a man of strange costume, with a dark eye
and bold countenance. A voice whispered—this is your brother, maiden.

This vision, spreading before, in the smoke-darkened glass, filled the
maiden with wonder with awe.

Was it a trick of the Conjurer's art? Or did some Angel of God, lift
the veil of flesh, from that pure woman's eyes, enabling her to beheld a
sight denied to mortal vision? Did some strange impulse of that angellike
instinct, which in woman, supplies the place of man's boasted, reason,
warn Amable of approaching danger?

The sequel of the legend will tell us.

Still the old man, starting from his seat, awaited an answer.

At last the maiden's voice was heard—

“I behold—” she began, but her voice was broken by a shriek.

There was the sound of a hurried struggle, a shriek, a confused tread. In
a moment from the clouds of smoke, appeared a man of some thirty years,
whose muscular form was clad in the scarlet uniform of a British officer.
One arm held Amable by the waist, while the other wound around her neck.

The old man started aghast from his seat. That face, swollen with debauchery,
those disclosed eyeballs starting from the purple lids, those lips,
stamped with a brutal smile—he knew it well, and knew that it was not the
face of his son.

He beheld him, Captain Marcham, a bravo who had persecuted Amable
with his addresses and been repulsed with scorn.

He stood there, his laugh of derision, ringing through the chamber, while

Amable looked up in his brutal face, with a terror that hushed her
breath.

The Astrologer stood near the hearth, the strange smile which had crossed
his face, once or twice before, now deepening into a sneering laugh. One
hand, placed within his breast, fondled the heavy purse which he had received
for his treachery from the British Captain. He had despatched his
servants from the mansion on various errands, left the hall-door unclosed so
as to afford secure entrance to the Captain and his bravoes. Amable
was lost.

In a moment Gerald Morton, instinctively became aware that his child
was in the bravo's power.

“Spare my girl,” he said, in a quivering voice. “She never harmed
you!”

“O, I will spare the lovely lass,” sneered Marcham, “Trust me for that!
Old man you need not fear! You old rebels with pretty daughters, should
not make your country mansions places of rendezvous for rebels and traitors.
Indeed you should'nt. That is, if you wish to keep your pretty girls safe.”

“When was my house a rendezvous for a rebel or a traitor?” said the
old man, rising with a trembling dignity.

“Have you not given aid, succor, money, provisions, to those rebels who
now skulk somewhere about in the fields of White Marsh? Did not the
rebel officers meet here for council, not more than a month ago? Has not
Mister Washington himself rested here, and received information at your
hands? Old man—to be plain with you—Sir William thinks the air of
Walnut Street gaol would benefit your health. I am commanded to arrest
you as a—SPY!”

The old man buried his face in his white hands.

“There is a way, however,” said the Captain, leering at Amable, “Let
me marry this pretty girl, and—presto vesto! The order for your arrest
will disappear!”

With a sudden bound Amable sprang from his arms, and sank crouching
near the hearth, her blue eyes fixed on her father, with a look of speechless
agony.

The danger, in all its terrible details stared her in the face. On one side,
dishonor or the pollution of that coward's embrace—on the other, death to
her father by the fever and confinement of Walnut Street gaol.

It is very pretty now-a-days for certain perfumed writers and orators, to
prate about the magnanimity of Britain, but could the victims who were
murdered within the walls of the old Gaol by British power, rise some fine
moonlight night, they would form a ghastly band of witnesses, extending
from the prison gate to the doors of Independence Hall.

The old man, Amable, the bravo and Astrologer, all felt the importance
of this truth: British power, means cruelty to the fallen, murder to the
unarmed brave. They all remembered, that Paoli was yet red with the

blood of massacre, while Walnut Street goal, every morning sent its disfigured
dead to Potter's field.

Therefore the old man buried his face in his hands, therefore Amable
terrified to the heart, sank crouching by the fireplace, while the bravo looked
with his brutal sneer, upon both father and child.

“Come girl—no trifling,” exclaimed Marcham, as he approached the
crouching maiden. “You must go with me, or your good father rests in gaol
before daybreak. Take your choice my pretty lass?”

The father raised his face from his hands. He was lividly pale, yet his
blue eyes shone with unusual light. His lip quivered, while his teeth,
closely clenched, gave a wild and unearthly aspect to his countenance.

All hope was over!

The intellect of the old man was, for a moment, threatened with ruin,
utter and withering, as the dark consciousness of his helplessness pressed
like lead upon his brain.

At this moment a footstep was heard, and lo! A man of singular costume
came through the feathery clouds of smoke, and stood between the
bravo and the father.

A man of almost giant height, with a war-blanket folded over his breast,
a wampum belt about his waist, glittering with tomahawk and knife, while
his folded arms enclosed a rifle.

The aquiline nose, the bold brow, the head destitute of hair, with a single
plume rising from the crown, the eagle-nose and clear full eye—there was
quiet majesty in the stranger's look. He was an Indian, yet his skin was
bronzed, not copper-colored; his eye was sharp and piercing, yet blue as a
summer sky.

For a moment he surveyed the scene. The Captain shrank back from
his gaze. The old man felt a sudden hope dawning over his soul. The
young woman looked up, and gazed upon the Indian's stern visage without
a fear.

There was a pause like the silence of the grave.

At last advancing a step, the Indian handed a paper to Gerald Morton.
He spoke, not in the forest-tongue, but in clear bold English, with a deep,
gutteral accent.

“The American Chief sends this to his father. He bade me deliver it,
and I have done his bidding.”

Then wheeling on his heel, he confronted the Captain:

“Give me that sword. The sword is for the brave man, not for the
coward. A brave man seeks warriors to display his courage: a coward
frightens old men and weak women. Will the coward in a red coat give
me the sword, or must I take it?”

There was a withering scorn in the Red-Man's tone. The British officer
stood as if appalled by a ghost.

“Your brothers are tied, as cowards should be tied, who put on the warrior's

dress to do a coward's work,” exclaimed the Indian. “My warriors
came on them, captured them and tied them together like wolves in a pack.
Come! We are waiting for you. To-night you must go to Valley Forge.”

There was something so strange in the clear English of this stern Indian,
that the bravo stood spell-bound, as though it was but the voice of a dream.

At this moment, two savage forms drew near, through the smoke, which
rolling away from the door, now hung coiled in wreaths near the ceiling.
Without a word, the Briton was led from the room. He made no resistance,
for the tomahawk of an Indian has an unpleasant glitter. As he disappeared,
his face gathered one impotent scowl of malice, like a snake that hisses
when your foot is on its head. The Astrologer skulked slowly at his heels.

The Indian was alone with father and daughter.

He looked from one to the other, while an expression of deep emotion
came over his bronzed face.

At last flinging down his rifle, he extended one hand to the old man, one
to the crouching woman.

“Father!” he groaned in a husky voice: “Sister! I have come at last!”

As though a strange electric impulse throbbed from their hearts and joined
them all together, in a moment the old man, his daughter and the Indian
lay clasped in each other's arms.

For some few moments, sobs, tears, broken ejaculations! At last the
old man bent back the Indian's head, and with flashing eyes, perused his
image in his face. The daughter too, without a fear, clung to his manly
arm, and looked tenderly up into his blue eyes.

“Father, sister! It is a long story, but I will tell it in a few words. A
white man, whom you had done wrong, stole me from your house thirty-three
years ago. He was an outcast from his kind and made his home in
the wigwam of the Indian. While the warriors taught me to bend the bow
and act a warrior's part, he learned me the tongue of my father. I grew up
at once a white man and an Indian. But, two moons ago, the white man,
whose name we never knew, but who was called the Grey-hawk, told me
the secret of my father's name. Then, he died. I was a warrior; a chief
among warriors. I came toward the rising of the sun to see my father and
my sister. One day I beheld the huts of Valley Forge—I am now a warrior
under the American chief. My band have done him service for many a day;
he is a Man. Father, I see you! Sister, I love you! But ask no more!
for never will the White Indian forsake his forest to dwell within walls—never
will the Chief lay down his blanket, to put on the dress of the white race!”

The Sister looked tenderly into her brother's face. The old man, as if
his only wish had been fulfilled, gazed long and earnestly on the bronzed
countenance of his child. He murmured the name of the man whom he
had darkly, terribly wronged. Then with a prayer on his lips, he sank
back in the arm chair.

He was dead.

On his glassy eye and fallen jaw streamed the warmth of the fire, while
at his feet knelt the white-Indian, his bronzed face glowing in the same
beam, that revealed his sister's face, pale as marble and bathed in tears.

Months passed away. Winter with its ice and snow was gone. Laurel
Hill was green and shadowy with summer. The deer browsed quietly
along the lawn of the old mansion, and the river, which the Indian called
Manayong, went laughing and shouting over its rocky bed.

It was summer, and Sir William Howe had deserted Philadelphia, when
one day, there came a messenger to Congress, in the old State House, that
a battle had been fought near Monmouth. A battle in which Sir William
learned, that Freedom had survived the disease and nakedness and starvation
of Valley Forge.

On that summer day, a young woman sat alone in the chamber of the old
mansion, where her father had died six months before. Alone by the window,
the breeze playing with her golden hair, the sunlight—stealing ray by
ray through thick vines—falling in occasional gleams over her young face.

Her blue eye was fixed upon a miniature, which pictured a manly face,
with dark eyes and raven hair, relieved by the breast of a manly form, clad
in the blue uniform of the Continental Army. It was the Betrothed of
Amable; the war once over, freedom won, they were to be married. He
was far away with the army, but her voiceless prayers invoked blessings on
his head.

While the maiden sat there, contemplating her lover's picture, a form
came stealing from the shadows of the room: a face looked over her
shoulder.

It was the White-Indian in his war-blanket.

His face became terribly agitated as he beheld that picture.

At last the maiden heard his hard-drawn breath. She turned her head
and greeted him at first with a smile, but when she beheld the horror,
glooming over his face, she felt her heart grow cold.

“Whence come you, brother?”

“Monmouth!”

“Have you no message for me? No word from —

The Brother extended his hand, and laid the hilt of a broken sword gently
on her bosom.

He said no word, but she knew it all. She saw the blood upon the hilt;
she saw her brother's face, she knew that she was Widow and Virgin at
once.

It was a dark hour in that old Mansion on the Schuylkill.

A graveyard among the hills, a small space of green earth separated from
the forest by a stone wall. In the midst, a wild cherry tree, flinging its
shadow over a white tombstone and a new made grave.

Sunset steals through these branches, over the white tombstone, down
into the recesses of the new-made grave. What is this we see beside the
grave? A man in Indian attire, bending over a coffin, on whose plate is
inscried a single word—

Ah, do not lift the lid, ah, do not uncover that cold face to the light! Ah,
do not lift the lid, for then the breeze will play with her tresses; then the
air will kiss her cheek. Her marble cheek, now colorless forever.

The White-Indian knelt there, the last of his race, bending over the corse
of that fair girl. No tear in his eye, no sob in his bosom. All calm as
stone, he bent there above his dead. Soon the coffin was lowered; anon
the grave was filled. The star-beams looked solemnly down through the
trees, upon the grave of that fair girl.

The Indian broke a few leaves from the wild cherry tree, and went on
his way.

He was never seen on the banks of the Manayong again.

Long years afterward, in the far wilds of the forest, a brave General who
had won a battle over the Indian race, stood beside an oaken tree, contemplating
with deep sorrow, the corse of a friendly savage. He lay there,
stiff and cold, the wreck of a giant man, his bronzed face, lighter in hue
than the visages of his brother Indians. He lay there, with blanket and
wampum belt and tomahawk about him, the rifle in his grasp, the plume
drooping over his bared brow.

He had died, shielding the brave General from the tomahawk. Yes,
with one sudden bound, he sprang before him, receiving on his breast, the
blow intended for Mad Antony Wayne.

And Wayne stood over him—his eyes wet with a soldier's tears—sorrowing
for him as for a rude Indian.

Little did he think that a white man lay there at his feet!

Ah, who can tell the magic of those forests, the wild enchantment of the
chase, the savage witchery of the Indian's life? Here was a man, a white
man, who, bred to Indian life, had in his mature manhood, rejected wealth
and civilization, for the deep joy of the wigwam and the prairie, and now
lay stretched—a cold corse, yet a warrior corse—on the banks of the Miami;
AN Indian to the last.[4]

X.—THE GRAVEYARD OF GERMANTOWN.

In Germantown there is an old-time graveyard. No gravelled walks,
no delicate sculpturings of marble, no hot-beds planted over corruption are
there. It is an old-time graveyard, defended from the highway and encircling
fields by a thick stone wall. On the north and west it is shadowed by
a range of trees, the sombre verdure of the pine, the leafy magnificence of
the maple and horse-chesnut, mingling in one rich mass of foliage. Wild
flowers are in that graveyard, and tangled vines. It is white with tomb-stones.
They spring up, like a host of spirits from the green graves; they
seem to struggle with each other for space, for room. The lettering on these
tombstones, is in itself, a rude history. Some are marked with rude words
in Dutch, some in German, one or more in Latin, one in Indian; others in
English. Some bend down, as if hiding their rugged faces from the light,
some start to one side; here and there, rank grass chokes them from the
light and air.

You may talk to me of your fashionable graveyards, where Death is
made to look pretty and silly and fanciful, but for me, this one old graveyard,
with its rank grass and crowded tombstones, has more of God and
Immortality in it, than all your elegant cemetries together. I love its soil:
its stray wild flowers are omens to me, of a pleasant sleep, taken by weary
ones, who were faint with living too long.

It is to me, a holy thought, that here my bones will one day repose. For
here, in a lengthening line, extend the tombstones, sacred to the memory of
my fathers, far back in to time. They sleep here. The summer day may
dawn, the winter storm may howl, and still they sleep on. No careless
eye looks over these walls. There is no gaudiness of sculpture to invite
the lounger. As for a pic nic party, in an old graveyard like this, it would
be blasphemy. None come save those who have friends here. Sisters
come to talk quietly with the ghost of sisters; children to invoke the spirit
of that Mother gone home; I, too sometimes, panting to get free from the
city, come here to talk with my sisters—for two of mine are here—with my
father—for that clover blooms above his grave.

It seems to me, too, when bending over that grave, that the Mother's
form, awakened from her distant grave, beneath the sod of Delaware, is also
here!—Here, to commune with the dead, whom she loved while living;
here, with the spirits of my fathers!

I cannot get rid of the thought that good spirits love that graveyard. For
all at once, when you enter its walls, you feel sadder, better; more satisfied
with life, yet less reluctant to die. It is such a pleasant spot, to take a long
repose. I have seen it in winter, when there was snow upon the graves,
and the sleigh-bells tinkled in the street. Then calmly and tenderly upon
the white tombstones, played and lingered the cold moon.

In summer, too, when the leaves were on the trees, and the grass upon
the sod, when the chirp of the cricket and katy-did broke shrilly over the
graves through the silence of night. In early spring, when there was scarce
a blade of grass to struggle against the north wind, and late in fall when
November baptizes you with her cloud of gloom, I have been there.

And in winter and summer, in fall and spring, in calm or storm, in sickness
or health, in every change of this great play, called life, does my heart
go out to that graveyard, as though part of it was already there.

Nor do I love it the less, because on every blade of grass, in every flower,
that wildly blooms there, you find written:—“This soil is sacred from
creeds. Here rests the Indian and the white man; here sleep in one sod,
the Catholic, Presbyterian, Quaker, Methodist, Lutheran, Mennonist, Diest,
Infidel. Here, creeds forgotten, all are men and women again, and not one
but is a simple child of God.”

This graveyard was established by men of all creeds, more than a century
ago. May that day be darkness, when creeds shall enter this rude gate.
Better had that man never been born, who shall dare pollute this soil with
the earthly clamor of sect. But on the man, who shall repair this wall, or
keep this graveyard sacred from the hoofs of improvement, who shall do his
best to keep our old graveyard what it is, on that man, be the blessings of
God; may his daughters be virtuous and beautiful, his sons gifted and brave.
In his last hour, may the voices of angels sing hymns to his passing soul.
If there was but one flower in the world, I would plant it on that man's
grave.

It was in November, not in chill, gloomy November, but in golden November,
when Paradise opens her windows to us, and wafts the Indian
Summer over the land, that I came to the graveyard.

There was a mellow softness in the air, a golden glow upon the sky,
glossy, gorgeous richness of foliage on the trees, when I went in. It was
in the afternoon. The sun was half-way down the sky. Everything was
still. A religious silence dwelt all about the graveyard.

An aged man, with a rosy countenance, and snow-white hair, sat on a
grave. His coat was strait and collarless, his hat broad in the rim. At
once I knew him for a Disciple of Saint William, the Patron Saint of Pennsylvania.
His eyes were fixed upon something at his feet. I drew nigh,
and beheld two skeletons resting on the grass near a new-made grave.

The old Quaker greeted me kindly, and I sat down opposite on a grassy
mound. The skeletons presented a strange, a meaning sight. Around
their crumbling bones were fluttering the remnants of soldiers' uniform.
Buttons, stamped with an eagle, pieces of the breast-belt, fragments of military
boots—ah, sad relics of the fight of Germantown! The sunlight
streamed slowly over their skulls, lighting up the hollow orbits, where once
shone the eyes; and over the bones of the hand, protruding from the crumbling
uniform.

We sat for a long while in silence.

At last the Quaker spoke.

“I am trying to remember which is John and which is Jacob?” said he.

“John?—Jacob?”

“Truly so. For I knew them well. I was but a youth then—on the
day of the battle, thee minds? The fourth of the tenth month, 1777!
Jacob was a fine young man, with light curly hair; he was married. John
was dark-haired, something younger than Jacob, but quite as good looking.
They were both with Washington at Skippack; with him they came to the
battle—”

“Ah, you remember the battle?”

“As well as if it happened last week. Did thee ever see a small, one
story house, about half-way down Germantown, with 1713 on its gable?
Jacob's wife lived there. On the morning of the battle, about ten o'clock,
she was standing in the door, her babe resting on her bosom. There was
a thick fog in the air. She was listening to the firing. I stood on the
opposite side, thinking what a fine-looking wife she was, for does thee mind,
she was comely. Her hair was glossy and brown; her eyes dark. She
was not very tall, but a wondrous pleasant woman to look upon. As I
stood looking at her, who should come running down the road, but Jacob
there, with this same uniform on, and a gun in his hand. I can see him
yet; and hear his voice, as plain as I now hear my own.

“ `Hannah! Hannah!' he cried, `we've beat 'em!' And he ran towards
her, and she held the babe out to him, but just at that moment, he fell in the
middle of the road, torn almost in two by a cannon ball, or some devil'swork
of that kind. Young man, it was a very sad sight! To see that
poor Jacob, running to kiss his wife and child, and just as the wife calls and
the babe holds out its little hands—ah!”

The Quaker rubbed his eye, blaming the road side dust for the tear that
glimmered there.

“And John?”

“Poor John! We found him after the battle in Chew's field. He was
quite dead—look! Thee can see the bnllet hole in his brain.”

And with his cane, he pointed to the scull of the soldier.

“We buried them together. They were fine-looking young men, and
many of us shed tears, when we put the sod upon their brows.”

“Sod? Had you no coffins?”

The old man opened his eyes.

“Had thee seen the village people, taking their barn-doors off their hinges,
so that they might carry away the dead bodies by dozens at a time, and
bury them in the fields, whenever a big hole was dug—had thee seen this,
thee would'nt ask such a question!”

“Was there not a great deal of glory on that day?”

“If thee means, that it was like an election parade, or a fourth of July

gathering, I can tell thee, there was not much glory of that kind. If thee
means that it made my blood boil to see the bodies of my neighbors carried
by, some dead, some groaning yet, some howling mad with pain; others
with legs torn off, others with arms rent at the very shoulder, here one with
his jaw broken, there another with his eyes put out;—if thee means that
boiling of the blood, caused by sights like these, then I can tell thee, there
was plenty of glory!”

“The battle was bloody then?”

“Did thee ever see how rich the grass grows on Chew's lawn? How
many hearts spent their last blood to fatten that soil?”

“You helped to bury the dead?”

“I remember well, that thy grandfather—he is buried yonder—took hold
of one corner of a barn-door, while I and two friends took the others. There
were some six or seven bodies piled crosswise, and huddled together on that
barn-door. We took them to the fields and buried them in a big pit. I
remember one fair-faced British officer; his ruffled shirt was red with blood.
He was a fine-looking young man, and doubtless had a wife or sister in England.
I pitied him very much.”

“Were you near the scene of conflict? I do not wish to imply that you
bore arms, for your principles forbid the thought.”

“I can remember standing in my father's door, when a wounded soldier
pursued by another, fell at my feet crying `quarter!' I remember that I
seized the pursuer's musket, and rapped him over the head, after which he
let the wounded soldier be.”

“Did you hurt him much?”

“He did'nt move afterward. Some evil people wished to make it appear,
that I killed him. But thee sees that was false, for he may have been
very tired running and died from the heat. However, I hit him with all
my strength.”

The Quaker held out his right arm, which was an arm of iron, even in
its withered old age.

“What was he? British or American?”

“He was dressed in red,” meekly responded the Quaker.

“Did you see General Washington during the fight?”

“I saw a tall man of majestic presence riding a grey horse. I saw him
now go in the mist; now come out again; now here, now there. One
time I saw him, when he reigned his horse in front of Chew's wall—he
looked terrible, for his eyes seemed to frown, his lips were clenched; his
forehead was disfigured by a big vein that seemed bursting from the skin.
He was covered with dust and blood—his saddle-cloth was torn by bullets.
I never forgot the look of that man, nor shall I, to the hour of my death.
That man they told me was George Washington.”

“Why was he thus moved?”

“An aid-de.camp had just told him that one of his Generals was drunk
under a hedge.”

“Did you see Cornwallis?”

“That I did. He was riding up the street, as fast as his horse could go
—a handsome man, but when I saw him, his face was white as a meal-bag.
Thee sees he was a brave man, but friend Washington came on him before
day, without timely notice.”

There was a curious twitch about the Quaker's mouth. He did not smile,
but still it was a suspicious shape for a Quaker's mouth.

XI.—“REMEMBER PAOLI.”

Hist!—It is still night; the clear sky arches above; the dim woods are
all around the field; and in the centre of the meadow, resting on the grass
crisped by the autumnal frosts, sleep the worn veterans of the war, disheartened
by want, and wearied by the day's march.

It is still night; and the light of the scanty fire falls on wan faces, hollow
eyes, and sunken cheeks; on tattered apparel, muskets unfit for use,
and broken arms.

It is still night; and they snatch a feverish sleep beside the scanty fire,
and lay them down to dream of a time when the ripe harvest shall no more
be trodden down by the blood-stained hoof—when the valley shall no more
be haunted by the Traitor-Refugee—when Liberty and Freedom shall walk
in broadcloth, instead of wandering about with the unshodden feet, and the
tattered rags of want.

It is still night; and Mad Anthony Wayne watches while his soldiers
sleep.

He watches beside the camp-fire. You can mark his towering form, his
breadth of shoulders, and his prominence of chest. You can see his face
by the red light of the fire—that manly face, with the broad forehead, the
marked eye-brows, over-arching the deep hazel eye, that lightens and gleams
as he gazes upon the men of his band.

You can note the uniform of the Revolution—the wide coat of blue,
varied by the buckskin sword-belt, from which depends the sword that
Wayne alone can wield,—the facings of buff, the buttons rusted by the dews
of night, and the march-worn trooper's boots, reaching above his knees,
with the stout iron spurs standing out from each heel.

Hist! The night is still, but there is a sound in yonder thicket.

Look! can you see nothing?

No. The night is still—the defenceless Continentals sleep in the centre
of the meadow—all around is dark. The sky above is clear, but the stars
give forth no light. The wind sweeps around the meadow—dim and indistinct
it sweeps, and is silent and still. I can see nothing.

Place your ear to the earth. Hear you nothing?

Yes—yes. A slight sound—a distant rumbling. There is thunder growling
in the bosom of the earth, but it is distant. It is like the murmur on
the ocean, ere the terrible white squall sweeps away the commerce of a nation—but
it is distant, very distant.

Now look forth on the night. Cast your eye to the thicket—see you
nothing?

Yes—there is a gleam like the light of the fire-fly. Ha! It lightens on
the night—that quivering gleam! It is the flash of swords—the glittering
of arms!

“Charge upon the Rebels! Upon them—over them—no quarter—no
quarter!”

Watcher of the night, watcher over the land of the New World, watching
over the fortunes of the starved children of Freedom—what see you now?

A band of armed men, mounted on stout steeds, with swords in their uplifted
hands. They sweep from the thicket; they encompass the meadow;
they surround the Rebel host!

The gallant Lord Grey rides at their head. His voice rings out clear
and loud upon the frosty air.

“Root and branch, hip and thigh, cut them down. Spare not a man—
heed never a cry for quarter. Cut them down! Charge for England and
St. George!”

And then there was uplifting of swords, and butchery of defenceless men,
and there was a riding over the wounded, and a trampling over the faces of
the dying. And then there was a cry for quarter, and the response—

“To your throats take that! We give you quarter, the quarter of the
sword, accursed Rebels!”

There was a moment, whose history was written with good sharp
swords, on the visages of dying men.

It was the moment when the defenceless Continental sprang up from his
hasty sleep, into the arms of the merciless death! It was the moment
when Wayne groaned aloud with agony, as the sod of Paoli was flooded
with a pool of blood that poured from the corses of the slaughtered soldiers
of his band. It was the moment when the cry for quarter was mocked—
when the Rebel clung in his despair to the stirrup of the Britisher, and
clung in vain; it was the moment when the gallant Lord Grey—that gentleman,
nobleman, Christian—whose heart only throbbed with generous impulses;
who from his boyhood, was schooled in the doctrines of mercy,
halloed his war-dogs on to the slaughter, and shouted up to the star-lit
Heavens, until the angels might grow sick of the scene—

“Over them—over them—heed never a cry—heed never a voice! Root
and branch cut them down!—No quarter!”

It is dark and troubled night; and the Voice of Blood goes up to God,
shrieking for vengeance!

It is morning; sad and ghastly morning; and the first sunbeams shine

over the field, which was yesternight a green meadow—the field that is now
an Aceldema—a field of blood, strewn with heaps of the dead, arms torn
from the body, eyes hollowed from the sockets, faces turned to the earth,
and buried in blood, ghastly pictures of death and pain, painted by the hand
of the Briton, for the bright sun to shine down upon, for men to applaud,
for the King to approve, for God to avenge.

It is a sad and ghastly morning; and Wayne stands looking over the
slaughtered heaps, surrounded by the little band of survivors, and as he
gazes on this scene of horror, the Voice of Blood goes shrieking up to God
for vengeance, and the ghosts of the slain darken the portals of Heaven,
with their forms of woe, and their voices mingle with the Voice of Blood.

Was the Voice of Blood answered?

A year passed, and the ghosts of the murdered looked down from the
portals of the Unseen, upon the ramparts of Stony Point.

It is still night; the stars look calmly down upon the broad Hudson; and
in the dim air of night towers the rock and fort of Stony Point.

The Britishers have retired to rest. They sleep in their warm, quiet
beds. They sleep with pleasant dreams of American maidens dishonored,
and American fathers, with grey hairs dabbled in blood. They shall have
merrier dreams anon, I trow. Aye, aye!

All is quiet around Stony Point: the sentinel leans idly over the wall
that bounds his lonely walk; he gazes down the void of darkness, until his
glance falls upon the broad and magnificent Hudson. He hears nothing—
he sees nothing.

It is a pity for that sentinel, that his eyes are not keen, and his glance
piercing. Had his eye-sight been but a little keener, he might have seen
Death creeping up that rampart in some hundred shapes—he might have
seen the long talon-like fingers of the skeleton-god clutching for his own
plump British throat. But his eye-sight was not keen—more's the pity for
him.

Pity it was, that the sentinel could not hear a little more keenly. Had
his ears been good, he might have heard a little whisper that went from two
hundred tongues, around the ramparts of Stony Point.

“General, what shall be the watch-word?”

And then, had the sentinel inclined his ear over the ramparts, and listened
very attentively indeed, he might have heard the answer, sweeping up to
the Heavens, like a voice of blood—

“Remember Paoli!”

Ho—ho! And so Paoli is to be remembered—and so the Voice of
Blood shrieked not in the ears of God in vain.

And so the vengeance for Paoli is creeping up the ramparts of the fort!
Ho—ho! Pity Lord Grey were not here to see the sport!

The sentinel was not blessed with supernatural sight or hearing; he did

not see the figures creeping up the ramparts; he did not hear their whispers,
until a rude hand clutched him round the throat, and up to the Heavens
swept the thunder-shout—

“Remember Paoli!”

And then a rude bayonet pinned him to the wood of the ramparts, and
then the esplanade of the fort, and its rooms and its halls were filled with
silent avengers, and then came Britishers rushing from their beds, crying for
quarter, and then they had it—the quarter of Paoli!

And then, through the smoke, and the gloom, and the bloodshed of that
terrible night, with the light of a torch now falling on his face, with the
gleam of starlight now giving a spectral appearance to his features, swept on,
right on, over heaps of dead, one magnificent form, grasping a stout broadsword
in his right hand, which sternly rose, and sternly fell, cutting a
British soldier down at every blow, and laying them along the floor of the
fort, in the puddle of their own hireling blood.

Ghosts of Paoli—shout! are you not terribly avenged?

“Spare me—I have a wife—a child—they wait my return to England!
Quarter—Quarter!”

“I mind me of a man named Shoelmire—he had a wife and a child—a
mother, old and grey-haired, waited his return from the wars. On the night
of Paoli, he cried for quarter! Such quarter I give you—Remember Paoli!”

“Save me—quarter!”

How that sword hisses through the air!

“Remember Paoli!”

`I have a grey-haired father! Quarter!”

“So had Daunton at Paoli! Oh, Remember Paoli!”

“Spare me—you see I have no sword!—Quarter!”

“Friend, I would spare thee if I dared. But the Ghosts of Paoli nerve
my arm—`We had no swords at Paoli, and ye butchered us!' they shriek.”

“Oh, Remember Paoli!”

And as the beams of the rising moon, streaming through yonder narrow
window, for a moment light up the brow of the Avenger—dusky with battle-smoke,
red with blood, deformed by passion—behold! That sword
describes a fiery circle in the air, it hisses down, sinks into the victim's
skull? No!

His arm falls nerveless by his side; the sword, that grim, rough blade,
dented with the records of the fight of Brandywine, clatters on the floor.

“It is my duty—the Ghosts of Paoli call to me—but I cannot kill you!'
shouts the American Warrior, and his weaponless hands are extended to
the trembling Briton.

All around is smoke, and darkness, and blood; the cry for quarter, and
the death-sentence, Remember Paoli! but here, in the centre of the scene
of slaughter—yes, in the centre of that flood of moonlight, pouring through
the solitary window, behold a strange and impressive sight:

The kneeling form—a grey-haired man, who has grown hoary doing
murder in the name of Good King George,—his hands uplifted in trembling
supplication, his eyes starting from the dilating lids, as he shrieks for the
mercy that he never gave!

The figure towering above him, with the Continental uniform fluttering
in ribands over his broad chest, his hands and face red with blood and
darkened with the stain of powder, the veins swelling from his bared throat,
the eye glaring from his compressed brow—

Such were the figures disclosed by the sudden glow of moonlight!

And yet from that brow, dusky with powder, red with blood, there broke
the gleam of mercy, and yet those hands, dripping with crimson stains,
were extended to lift the cringing Briton from the dust.

“Look ye—old man—at Paoli—” and that hoarse voice, heard amid the
roar of midnight conflict, grew tremulous as a child's, when it spoke those
fatal words—at Paoli; “even through the darkness of that terrible night, I
beheld a boy, only eighteen years old, clinging to the stirrup of Lord Grey;
yes, by the light of a pistol-flash, I beheld his eyes glare, his hands quiver
over his head, as he shrieked for `Quarter!' ”

“And he spared him?” faltered the Briton.

“Now, mark you, this boy had been consigned to my care by his
mother, a brave American woman, who had sent this last hope of her
widowed heart forth to battle —”

“And he spared him—” again faltered the Briton.

“The same pistol, which flashed its red light over his pale face, and
quivering hands, sent the bullet through his brain. Lord Grey held that
pistol, Lord Grey heard the cry for mercy, Lord Grey beheld the young
face trampled into mangled flesh by his horse's hoofs! And now, sir—
with that terrible memory of Paoli stamped upon my soul—now, while that
young face, with the red wound between the eyes, passes before me, I
spare your life;—there lies my sword—I will not take it up again! Cling
to me, sir, and do not part for an instant from my side, for my good soldiers
have keen memories. I may forget, but hark! Do you hear them?
They do not massacre defenceless men in cold blood—ah, no! They
only—