University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

In one of those rough and secluded
towns, situated in the heart of the Green
Mountains, is a picturesque little valley,
containing, perhaps, something over two
thousand acres of improvable land, formerly
known in that section of the country
by the appallation of The Harwood Settlement,
so called from the name of the original
proprietor of the valley. As if formed
by some giant hand, literally scooping
out the solid mountain and moulding it
into shape and proportion, the whole valley
presents the exact resemblance of an
oval basin whose sides are composed of a

continuous ridge of lofty hills bordering it
around, and broken only by two narrow
outlets at its northerly and southerly extremities.
The eastern part of this valley
is covered by one of those transparent
ponds, which are so beautifully characteristic
of Vermontane scenery, laying in the
form of a crescent, and extending along
beneath the closely encircling mountains
on the east nearly the whole length of the
interior landscape, forever mirroring up
from its darkly bright surface, faintly or
vividly, as cloud or sunshine may prevail,
the motley groups of the sombre forest,
where the more slender and softer tinted
beech and maple seem struggling for a
place among the rough and shaggy forms
of the sturdy hemlock, peering head over
head, up the steeply ascending cliffs of
the woody precipice. While here and
there, at distant intervals, towering high
over all, stands the princely pine, waving
its majestic head in solitary grandeur, a
striking but melancholy type of the aboriginal
Indian still occasionally found lingering
among us, the only remaining representative
of a once powerful race, which
have receded before the march of civilized
men, now destined no more to flourish
the lords of the plain and the mountain.
This pond discharges its surplus
waters at its southern extremity in a pure
stream of considerable size, which here,
as if in wild glee at its escape from the embrace
of its parent waters, leaps at once,
from a state of the most unruffled tranquility,
over a ledgy barrier, and, with noisy
reverberations, goes bounding along from
cliff to cliff, in a series of romantic cascades,
down a deep ravine, till the lessening
echoes are lost in the sinuosities of
the outlet of the valley. From the western
shore of this sheet of water the land
rises in gentle undulations, and with a
gradual ascent, back to the foot of the
mountains, which here, as on every other
side, rear their ever-green summits to
the clouds, standing around this vast fortress
of nature as huge centinels posted along
the lofty outworks to battle with the
careering hurricanes that burst in fury on
their immovable sides, and arrest and receive
on their own unscathed heads the
shafts of the lightning descending for its
victims to the valley below, while they
cheerily bandy from side to side the voicy
echoes of the thunderpeal with their
mighty brethren of the opposite rampart.

Nor is the beauty of the minor features
of the landscape surpassed by the bold
grandeur of the main outlines. The interior
of the valley, for miles in extent,
uniformly slooping to the eastward, is
checked with beautiful alternations of
lawn and woodland, forever richly clothed
in their season with the wavy and lighter
verdure of the cultivated field, or the
deep-tinted and exuberant foliage of the
forest, while a thousand gushing rills
come dancing down from the surrounding
heights to meet the morning sun, and glitter
in his first smile, as he looks in over

the eastern barrier on his return from his
diurnal circuit.

At the period of which we are about to
write, the rude dwellings of the small band
of settlers, who then inhabited the valley,
were scattered at different intervals along
the road, which entering from the south,
wound round the westerly margin of the
pond and passed off through the interlapping
mountains towards Canada. Of
these dwellings the largest, and most respectable
in appearance, was the one situated
in the most southerly part of the valley.
The old log house of the pioneer,
still standing in the back ground surrounded
by weeds and briars, had here given
place to a new framed house of one story,
which, together with the appearance of
the out buildings and the well cultivated
grounds adjoining, betokened a considerable
degree of thrift and comfort in the
circumstances of the owner.

Towards night on a beautiful summer's
day, at the time we have chosen for the

opening of our tale, a young man and
maiden might be seen leaving the door of
the cottage we have described, and leisurely
taking their way across the pasture
in a direction to intersect the main road
at the termination of the clearing on the
south. The first named of this couple,
apparently of the age of about twenty five,
was in the full bloom of vigorous manhood.
His hardy, robust, and well formed
frame was graced with an open frank
and highly intel igent countenance, indicative
at once of an ingenuous disposition,
a light heart, and the conciousness of a
strong hand, with mental capacity to govern
and render it available—exhibiting in
his person a fine sample of the early imigrants
of Vermont, who were almost universally
men of uncommon physical powers,
and generally of moral qualities which
quailed at no ordinary obstacles—a fact
attributable, probably, neither to chance,
nor the peculiarly invigorating effects of
their climate, but to the natural operation
of these very powers and qualities themselves,
which only could incite them to
forsake the ease and comfort of an old settlement,
with the certainty of encountering
hardships in a new one and enduring trials
from which men of common mould
would shrink with dismay. His fair companion
was evidently quite youthful.—
Her person was rather slightly formed,
but of closely knit and beautifully rounded
proportions, which were indebted for their
almost faultless symmetry to none of the
crippling arts of fashion, but solely to the
hand of unrestrained nature, giving a free
and graceful motion, and a step as light
and agile as that of the young fawn of
the mountains among which she was reared.
The complexion of her face, however,
was perhaps too dark to be delicate,
or to give full effect to the rich brown
tresses that encircled her high forehead
and fell profusely in natural ringlets down
her finely arched neck. And her features
also, though regular, were remarkable
only for the wonderful vivacity of their
expression; though now, as she and her
companion pursued their way from the
house some rods in silence, her mind
seemed absent, or absorbed by some care,
her looks were quiescent and listless, and
her dark blue eye seemed sleeping in abstraction—but
now her lover spoke and a
thousand variant emotions came flitting
over her countenance—a smile of peculiar
sweetness played on her lips, her
cheeks were wreathed in dimples, and her
eyes fairly sparkled with a light of the
soul that seemed at the instant to have taken
perch within them:—

“May,” said he, “May, my girl, do
you know that I have invited you out for
this little walk only to bid you adieu, and
that too for a considerable season?”

“No!—surely!” replied the girl pausing
in her step, and looking up into the
manly features of her lover with an expression
of lively concern—“surely, you
are not going your journey so soon?”

“Yes, May, I have a horse in readiness
at the village below, and thither I propose
walking to-night, to be prepared for an
early start for Massachusetts in the morning.”

“And how soon will you return?”

“Perhaps I may be absent nearly two
months.”

“So very long?”

“Most probably—my business is such
as may lead to delays—but why so concerned,
May? this one more absence and
then—”

“Yes, yes, I know what you would say,
but why is even this absence necessary?”

“It is but right that you should know,
May, and I will tell you—It is now nearly
a year since I contracted for the land
on which I made a pitch in this settlement.
The time for a payment when I
am to receive a title has nearly arrived;
and I am going to gather up the little pittance
of property which I earned with my
own hands, and left invested in my native

state, when I departed for the wild
woods of Vermont, and which I now
need to enable me to meet this payment.”

“It is right then, I presume, that you
go, but yet I dread your absence.”

“Dread! I hardly dared hope that my
presence was so much valued, May.”

“How vain now!—no, no, I did mean
that—I have other reasons for dreading
your absence.”

“And what can they be, dearest May?”

“I have often thought I would never
disturb your feelings by the story of my
little troubles.”

“Troubles! and not tell me, May—
you surprise and disturb me already—
to whom should you confide them, if not
to me?”

“True, Mr. Ashley, true, if you take
the interest in me which you profess—to
you certainly if to any one would I confide
them. And indeed should any thing
happen to me in your absence in consequence
of their existence I should wish

perhaps I had apprized you of the difficulties
which beset me—”

“O tell me, tell me, May.”

“I will—You already know that Mr.
and Mrs. Martin, with whom I have lived
from a small child, are not my father and
mother by relationship, and I am sorry to
say they are not more so by their treatment—often,
too often, have they made
me to feel that I am the child of other parents.”

“Why, surely you never even hinted
such a thing before, and I never suspected
any thing of the kind. They certainly
have appeared sufficiently kind to you
in my presence.”

“O yes, in your presence; and even
when you are in the neighborhood they
are more cautious in their cruelty, but as
soon as you are fairly out of the settlement
for any considerable absence, I
soon am made aware of it by other means
than the void of my feelings at the loss of
your society. You have been told of a

pedlar who undertook to be my suitor the
year before you came here. That was
their work; and I never shall forget their
meanness in trying to unite me to that
vagabond,—to get me out of the country,
as I have often thought.”

`But what reason can they have for
such a treatment, and in what manner is
it exercised?'

`I am not sensible of ever have given
them any cause, and I cannot even guess
at the reason. As regards the manner,
it is no personal violence that I complain
of; but is it much less painful to be insulted,
despised—to see, know, and be
made to feel that I am hated?”

`No, May, no. This is indeed news
to me, but it must not, shall not be. I
will this moment return and see them,
and secure you a kinder treatment, or, as
sure as my name is William Ashley, their
house this day ceases to be your home.'

“Oh no! not for the world! not a step,
not a word,—if you love me, not a word

to them of what I have told you. I would
not leave them at this late period,—I can
bear with them a few months longer, and
then—and then, who knows,' she continued
hesitating and blushing as she dashed
aside the tear that had gathered in her eye
at the recital of her wrongs, and looked
up archly to her lover, `who knows
whether I am then to find a better home?”

`Who knows? Ah, May, let the time
for proving this but arrive; for, by-all that
is true and sacred in honor, or in love, I
swear.'—

`O no, no, no!' interrupted the girl
with returning vivacity, and with that
playful tact, with which woman so well
knows how to quell the storm she has
raised in the less versatile bosom of man,
`O no, no, don't swear at me—I have enough
of that at home.'

The lovers, having now arrived at the
end of their walk, seated themselves amidst
a cluster of low evergreens on the
brink of a high bank, to indulge a while,

before the final adieu, in that luxury of
love, the interchange of the mutual pledges
of affection on the eve of separation.
The scenery of the spot was well calculated
to enhance the natural interest of the
moment, and hallow it to their feelings.
Some twenty or thirty feet below, and almost
directly under their feet, the road,
just emerging from the woods, wound along
on a scanty jut, or shelf of the hill-side,
which immediately beyond, formed
a lofty precipice terminating in the stream,
that rushed in stifled murmurs swiftly
down its rugged channel, deeply embowered
in the overhanging forest beneath.
The cool spray, stealing through the dark
foliage of the lofty fir and spruce, whose
roots were grasping the rocky margin of
the stream a hundred feet below, and
whose wavy and attenuated tops now
seemed almost within the reach of the
hand, was visibly rising athwart the bright
pencils of the struggling sunbeams in glittering
vibrations to the heavens, and with
grateful freshness came mingling on the
senses with the balmy odour of the birch
and gilead; while the seemingly low encircling
firmament canopied their heads
with that deep and rich cerulean so peculiar
to the woody glens of the Green
Mountains; and all around and above
them was breathing a purity, and shedding
a tranquil brightness beautifully emblematical,
alike of the innocent and unalloyed
affections of their gushing hearts,
and their sunny anticipations of the future.

Their enjoyment of these happy moments,
however, was soon to be interrupted.
Their attention was now arrested
by the sounds of clattering hoofs in the
road below; and turning their eyes to the
spot from whence the noise proceeded
they beheld a single horseman urging,
with cruel applications of the whip, his faltering
steed up the hill towards the settlement.
When nearly opposite, or rather
under the spot where our lovers sat concealed

from view by the boughs of their
covert, the horse paused, staggered an instant,
and fell with his rider to the ground.
The poor animal after a few convulsive
flounderings, gasped feebly, and died on
the spot. `Damn the luck!' exclaimed
the traveller, giving the dead carcass two
or three spiteful kicks, `damn the luck, the
horse is dead! However,' he continued
after a short pause occupied in taking a
hasty glance up and down the road, and
then over the precipice, `however, dead
horses like dead men, will tell no tales—
that is, if well buried. And here's grave
enough down this bottomless gulf in all
conscience, I should think—so now for a
speedy funeral.' So saying and hastily unlacing
a small valise, attached to the crupper
of the somewhat tattered saddle, and
filled apparently with clothing, he grappled
with main strength the body of the
horse, and rolled it off the precipice, down
the steep side of which it was heard heavily
bounding through briars, bushes, and
fallen tree tops, till it struck with a faint
splash in the water below. With another
rapid glance thrown cautiously around
him, he took his valise under his arm, and
proceeded leisurely on towards the settlement.

`I am so glad he is gone, and without
discovering us!' half audibly exclaimed
May, the first to rouse from the mute surprise
with which they had witnessed the
whole transaction that so suddenly came
and terminated, like the detached scene
of some panoramic exhibition passing quickly
before them, `I can breathe again now.
How strangely he talked to himself!—
Don't you think his conduct very singular?'

`Singular enough!' replied Ashley, `but
he really displayed some cool philosophy
in the death and burial of his horse, as he
termed tumbling him down the gulf.'

`Who and what can he be?'

`I am puzzled to conjecture. But I am
inclined to believe him some watched

smuggler, who was riding for life to meet
and secrete some goods he may have coming
in this direction. These gentry often
take this back road for their excursions,
I am told.'

`It may be so, but I did not like his appearance
any better than his actions; how
suspicious he looked round to discover if
any one was in sight! And how cruel to
beat his horse so, and then kick the poor
creature as he was dying!'

`Nor did I like the appearance of the
fellow at all, and I confess I am not quite
satisfied with my own solution of the affair;
but I have no further leisure at present
to bestow in useless conjectures—perhaps
one or both of us may learn more
hereafter that will throw light on the subject.
And now, May, my dearest May, I
must go, leaving you to return to the house
alone.'

`O, not yet.'

`Indeed and indeed I must linger no
longer—see! the sun is nearly to the

mountains. But once more, May, do you
love me?'

`O, too much!'

`And will be true?'

`Forever!'

`Then, dearest girl, may the great one
above us preserve you,—farewell, farewell!'

`Farewell!' sighed the tearful girl in
accents soft and broken as the dying murmur
of the distant cascade with which they
mingled on the air. An instant, and Ashley
stood in the road below giving the last
lingering look of parting,—another, and
he had disappeared from the sight of his
sorrowful companion who slowly and pensively
pursued her lonely way back to her
now, more than ever, dreary and joyless
home at the cottage we have already described.