Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

Mary leaped upon a rock and protected the missionary from the Indians.

MARY DERWENT
A Tale of Wyoming and Mohawk Valleys in 1778

BY

ANN S. STEPHENS

PUBLISHED BY

FOWLER, DICK & WALKER

THE BOSTON STORE BOOK SHOP

WILKES-BARRE, PA.

THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS

BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK

CONTENTS

A Map Showing the location of the early settlements in the Wyoming and Mohawk River Valleys, which were the Scene of this drama of early pioneer life.—Mary Derwent.

WYOMING

On Susquehanna’s side, fair Wyoming!

Although the wild flower on the ruined wall,

And roofless homes a sad remembrance bring

Of what thy gentle people did befall,

Yet thou wert once the loveliest land of all,

That see the Atlantic wave their morn restore.

Sweet land! May I thy lost delights recall,

And paint thy Gertrude in her bowers of yore,

Whose Beauty was the love of Pennsylvania’s Shore.

Delightful Wyoming! beneath thy skies,

The happy shepherd swains had nought to do,

But feed their flocks on green declivities

Or skim perchance thy lake with light canoe,

From morn till Evening’s sweeter pastime grew,

With Timbrel, when beneath the Forest Brown,

Thy lovely maidens would the dance renew,

And aye those sunny mountains half-way down,

Would echo flagelet from some romantic town.

Then, where of Indian Hills the daybreak takes,

His leave, how might you the flamingo see

Disporting like a meteor on the lakes—

And playful squirrel on his nut-grown tree:

And every sound of life was full of glee,

From merry Mock-bird’s song, or hum of men;

While heark’ning, fearing nought their revelry,

The wild deer arched his neck from glades and then,

Unhunted, sought his woods and wilderness again.

Thomas Campbell.

FOREWORD

In issuing a new edition of Mrs. Ann S. Stephens’ historic novel, Mary Derwent, Dial Rock Chapter, Daughters American Revolution of West Pittston, in the upper end of Wyoming Valley, deems it well to state, for a new generation of readers, the circumstances that led to its being written. In the early 50’s of the last century, this brilliant and versatile author, then editor of Peterson’s Magazine, Philadelphia, spent several successive summers in West Pittston, at the beautiful and hospitable home of Mr. Samuel Benedict, whose young son, Frank Lee Benedict, was then winning his first recognition as an author, and had already become associated with the magazine under her editorship. During those summers, Mrs. Stephens became deeply interested in the history and traditions of Wyoming, studied every original source of its history within reach; listened to the story of the events of 1778 and the years preceding the tragedy of that memorable year, from the lips of men and women whose parents had escaped with their lives at that terrible time. A lover of scenery, a close observer alike of its broader aspects and its minute details, and happily gifted with remarkable clearness of vision “that,” as one biographer writes, “enabled her to be very realistic in the transcription of natural scenery”—this, added to her qualifications for writing the one standard historic novel that has ever appeared based upon Wyoming’s history, theme, incidents, characters and setting of the story were ready when the call came for “A Story of American Life in the Olden Times,” by one of the periodicals of the day, which offered a $400 prize for the one judged the best. “Mary Derwent” was the winner of that prize. Its first edition carries this Dedication:

To My Dear Friend,

Mrs. Samuel Benedict, of Wyoming Valley, in which the principal historic events of my story transpired, this book is affectionately dedicated.

Anna S. Stephens.

New York, June 1, 1858.

The book has gone through various editions; its latest issue being in the uniform edition of her works, in 23 volumes, published in 1886, the year of the author’s death. It was also republished serially in the Pittston Gazette in 1878, at the time of the Centennial “In Memoriam” gatherings around the Wyoming Monument. But it has been for some years out of print and its historic value, its accurate transcription of Wyoming’s beautiful scenery and its vivid delineations, both of character and events, has led to this new edition in behalf of Dial Rock Chapter, Daughters of American Revolution.

Susan E. Dickinson.

Scranton, Pa., March 10, 1908.

MARY DERWENT

A Tale of the Wyoming Valley in 1778

CHAPTER I
THE VALLEY OF WYOMING

Monockonok Island lies in the stream of the Susquehanna, where the Valley of Wyoming presents its greenest fields and most level banks to the sunshine. It is a quiet little spot, lying dreamily in the river, which breaks and sparkles around it with a silvery tumult. The Indians have gathered up the music of these waters in a name that will live forever—Monockonok—rapid or broken waters. You scarcely notice the island amid the luxuriant scenery of Wyoming, it seems so insignificant in its prettiness. Hedges of black alder, hazel branches, and sedgy rushes stand in thickets, or droop in garlands along its shores.

A few miles below Monockonok, between a curve of the river and a picturesque sweep of the mountains, lies the town of Wilkesbarre, a gem among villages set in a haven of loveliness.

Two or three miles higher up may be seen the town of Pittston, with its mines, its forges, its mills, and its modern dwelling-houses, crowding close up to the heart of the valley, in which the Lackawanna and the Susquehanna unite among exhaustless coal beds and the eternal beat of human industry.

For twenty miles below the Lackawanna gap, the valley, though under partial cultivation for nearly a quarter of a century, seemed scarcely more than an unbroken forest. The beautiful river in its bosom was almost hidden beneath the huge black walnuts, the elms and sycamores that crowded to its banks.

But with all this beautiful wildness, the strife of disputed civilization had already been felt in the valley. Indian forages were frequent, and the Connecticut settlers had been twice driven from their humble dwellings by the Pennsylvanians, who were restive at the introduction of pioneers from the neighboring States into this fertile region.

The blackened ruins of a dwelling here and there left evidence of this unnatural contest, while stockades and block-houses of recent erection, scattered along the valley, gave picturesque proofs of continued anxiety and peril.

From twenty to thirty houses occupied the spot where Wilkesbarre now stands, while log-cabins were grouped near the forts, each with its clearing, its young fruit-orchard, and its patch of wheat or corn.

A single log-cabin, sheltered by a huge old elm with a slope of grass descending to the water in front, and a garden in the rear, enriched with variously tinted vegetables, and made cheerful by a few hollyhocks, marigolds, and sunflowers, stood like a mammoth bird’s nest on Monockonok Island.

Two immense black walnuts, with their mastlike trunks naked thirty feet high, stood back from the house. The shore was broken up with clumps of sycamores, oaks, maples, and groups of drooping willows, while an undergrowth of dogwood, mountain-ash and tamarisk trees chained into huge garlands by frost grape-vines and wild clematis, were seen in picturesque leafiness along the banks.

This log-cabin had been built years before, by a young man who came with his mother and his two little orphan girls to seek a home, and hide the deep grief occasioned by the loss of his wife in the wilderness. Derwent took up his residence in Wyoming with the New England settlers on their second return to the valley, when it was almost as much inhabited by the Indians as the whites.

Derwent struggled manfully in his new enterprise, but it was with a broken spirit and by stern moral force alone. His health, always delicate, sunk beneath the labor of establishing a new home, and though he worked on, month by month, it was as a Pilgrim toils toward a shrine, patiently and with endurance rather than hope.

Two little girls formed the sunshine of this humble family, and the fairy island was made brighter by their pleasant voices and graceful ways, as it was by the wild birds that haunted it with music. In the great indulgence of the invalid father, and the active love of that dear old grandmother, they had early lost all sense of orphanage, and were happy as the wild birds, free as the striped squirrels that peeped at them from the branches of the black walnut trees where they loved to play.

Very different were these two children from infancy up. Jane, the youngest, was a bright, happy little creature, full of fun, eager for a frolic, and heedless of everything else; endowed with commonplace goodness and a pleasant temper, she was simply a bright, lovable child. But Mary, who seemed younger by half than her robust sister, was so fragile, so delicate, that you dreaded to see the very winds of heaven blow upon her, even when they left the spring blossoms unhurt. Her large wistful eyes were full of earnestness. She was so fair, so fragile, swaying as she walked, like a flower too heavy for its stem, and with that look of unutterable sweetness forever about the little mouth.

With Derwent Little Mary was an object of singular tenderness, while the force and life of his warmer affections went to the younger child. He was their only teacher, and during the years that he lived it was a pleasant recreation to give them such instruction as his own rather superior attainments afforded.

Thus in primitive happiness the little family lived till Mary passed gently out of her childhood. There was little visiting among the pioneers, and a stranger seldom made way to Monockonok. An Indian sometimes touched the island with his canoe in his progress down the river; but this was always a happy event to the children, who received the savages with childish admiration, as if they had been orioles or golden robins. At the sight of a canoe, Jane would run gleefully to the river, waving kisses to the savage with her hand, and flaunting out her apron as a signal to win him shoreward. It was a singular fact, but the Indians seldom obeyed these signals unless Mary was by her side. A single gleam of her golden hair—a glimpse of her bent form—would prove more effectual than all her sister’s pretty wiles.

Why did these savages come so readily at her look? What was the meaning of the strange homage with which they approached her? Why did they never touch her dress, or smooth her hair, or give her any of those wild marks of liking which Jane received so cheerfully? Why did they lay eagles’ plumes and the skins of flame-colored birds at her feet, with so much humility? Mary could never comprehend this, but it filled her with vague awe, while the savages went away thoughtfully, like men filled with a spirit of worship.

One other person sometimes visited the island, who had a powerful influence over these children. This man was an Indian missionary, who, following the path of Zinzendorf, had made his home in the wilderness, about the time that Derwent entered the valley. He was evidently a man of birth and education, for even the wild habits of the woods had been insufficient to disguise the natural refinement of mind and manners which made the humility of his character so touchingly beautiful.

This man came often to the island. Sometimes he remained all night in the cabin. Sometimes he lingered days with the family, teaching the little girls those higher branches which their father could not control, and planting a thousand holy thoughts in the young minds, that lifted themselves to his knowledge, as the flower opens its cup for the night dew.

Under these beautiful and almost holy influences the children lived in their island home, each taking from the elements around her such nutriment as her nature craved, till Derwent, who had been ill since their first remembrance, sunk slowly to his deathbed.

The last attack came suddenly, while the missionary was absent among the Shawnees, far down the valley; but scarcely had the little family felt the need of his presence, when he appeared quietly and kindly. All one night he remained with the sick man; their conversation could be heard in broken fragments in the next room, where the old mother sat weeping over her grandchildren, holding Jane fondly in her lap, while Mary sat upon the floor, so chilled with grief that she did not feel the tender sorrow lavished upon her sister, as neglect of herself. Like a pure white lily broken at the stem, she sat wistfully gazing in the distance, wondering what death was, vaguely and in dreamy desolation. They were called at last, and with a dying effort Jane was drawn to her father’s bed, the last breath, the last blessing fell upon her. Mary had no time; the father’s life was exhausted in that one benediction.

The missionary led her forth into the open air. He said but little, and his voice fell dreamily on the senses of the child; but its first low cadence filled her soul with infinite resignation. From that time Mary could never realize that her father had died, leaving no blessing for her. It seemed as if the missionary had inhaled the life from his departing soul, and turned it all to love. The child recognized a double presence in this holy man. Not even her grandmother was permitted to kiss the forehead which his lips had touched. Her brow became sacred from that time, and she would shrink back with a cry of absolute pain if any one attempted to disturb the kiss which was to her the place of a lost blessing.

The missionary had many duties to perform, and his intercourse with the island was sometimes interrupted for months; but the little heart that clung to him could live upon a remembrance of his teachings, even when his presence was withheld. It was a wonderful influence, that which his strong, pure soul had obtained over the child. While these feelings were taking root in the nature of one sister, the other was working out her own life, and the grandmother took up the duties imposed by her bereavement with great resolution.

CHAPTER II
THE CRUEL ENLIGHTENMENT

Grandmother Derwent had contrived to purchase implements for spinning and weaving the coarse cloth, which constituted the principal clothing of the settlers. The inhabitants gave her plenty of work, and produce from her farm supplied her household with grain and vegetables.

Even the little girls, who under many circumstances would have been a burden, were in reality an assistance to her.

Jane was a bright and beautiful child, with dark silky hair, pleasant eyes, and lips like the damp petals of a red rose. She was, withal, a tidy, active little maiden, and, as Mrs. Derwent was wont to say, “saved grandma a great many steps” by running to the spring for water, winding quills, and doing what Miss Sedgwick calls the “odds and ends of housework.”

Jane led a pleasant life on the island. She was a frank, mirthful creature, and it suited her to paddle her canoe on the bosom of the river, or even to urge it down the current, when “grandma” wanted a piece of cloth carried to the village, or was anxious to procure tea and other delicacies for her household.

When Mrs. Derwent’s quill-box was full, and “the work all done up,” Jane might be found clambering among the wild rocks, which frowned along the eastern shore, looking over the face of some bold precipice at her image reflected in the stream below; or, perchance, perched in the foliage of a grape-vine, with her rosy face peering out from the leaves, and her laugh ringing merrily from cliff to cliff, while her little hands showered down the purple clusters to her sister below.

Such was Jane Derwent, at the age of fourteen; but poor little Mary Derwent! nature grew more and more cruel to her. While each year endowed her sister with new beauty and unclouded cheerfulness, she, poor delicate thing, was kept instinctively from the notice of her fellow-creatures. The inmates of that little cabin could not bear that strange eyes should gaze on her deformity—for it was this deformity which had ever made the child an object of such tender interest.

From her infancy the little girl had presented a strange mixture of the hideous and the beautiful. Her oval face, with its marvellous symmetry of features, might have been the original from which Dubufe drew the chaste and heavenly features of Eve, in his picture of the “Temptation.” The same sweetness and purity was there, but the expression was chastened and melancholy. Her soft blue eyes were always sad, and almost always moist; the lashes drooped over them, an expression of languid misery. A smile seldom brightened her mouth—the same mournful expression of hopelessness sat forever on that calm, white forehead; the faint color would often die away from her cheek, but it seldom deepened there.

Mary was fifteen before any person supposed her conscious of her horrible malformation, or was aware of the deep sensitiveness of her nature. The event which brought both to life occurred a few years after the death of her father. Both the children had been sent to school, and her first trial came on the clearing, before the little log schoolhouse of the village. Mary was chosen into the centre of the merry ring by Edward Clark, a bright-eyed, handsome boy, with manners bold and frank almost to carelessness.

The kind-hearted boy drew her gently into the ring, and joined the circle, without the laugh and joyous bound which usually accompanied his movements. There was an instinctive feeling of delicacy and tenderness towards the little girl which forbade all boisterous merriment when she was by his side. It was her turn to select a partner; she extended her hand timidly towards a boy somewhat older than herself—the son of a rich landholder in the valley; but young Wintermoot drew back with an insulting laugh, and refused to stand up with the hunchback.

Instantly the ring was broken up. Edward Clark leaped forward, and with a blow, rendered powerful by honest indignation, smote the insulter to the ground. For one moment Mary looked around bewildered, as if she did not comprehend the nature of the taunt; then the blood rushed up to her face, her soft blue eyes blazed with a sudden flash of fire, the little hand was clenched, and her distorted form dilated with passion. Instantly the blood flowed back upon her heart, her white lips closed over her clenched teeth, and she fell forward with her face upon the ground, as one stricken by unseen lightning.

The group gathered around her, awe-stricken and afraid. They could not comprehend this fearful burst of passion in a creature habitually so gentle and sweet-tempered. It seemed as if the insolent boy had crushed her to death with a sneer.

Her brave defender knelt and raised her head to his bosom, tears of generous indignation still lingered on his burning cheek, and his form shook with scarcely abated excitement.

At length Mary Derwent arose with the calmness of a hushed storm upon her face, and turning to her inevitable solitude walked silently away.

There was something terrible in the look of anguish with which she left her companions, taking, as it were, a silent and eternal farewell of all the joys that belong to childhood. The coarse taunt of the boy had been a cruel revelation, tearing away all the tender shields and loving delusions with which home-affection had so long sheltered her. She did not know what meaning lay in the word hunchback, but felt, with a sting of unutterable shame, that it was applied to her because she was unlike other girls. That she must never be loved as they were—never hope to be one of them again.

The school-children looked on this intense passion with silent awe. Even Jane dared not utter the sympathy that filled her eyes with tears, or follow after her sister.

So with terror and shame at the cruel discovery at her heart, Mary went away. The blood throbbed in her temples and rushed hotly through all her veins. An acute sense of wrong seized upon her, and thirsting to be alone she fled to the woods like a hunted animal, recoiling alike from her playfellows and her home.

Through the thick undergrowth and over wild rocks the poor creature tore her way, struggling and panting amid the thorny brushwood, as if life and death depended upon her progress.

A striped squirrel ran along the boughs of a chestnut-tree and peered down upon her from among the long green leaves and tassel-like blossoms. A flush came to her beautiful forehead, and with a cry that seemed in itself a pang, she tore up a stone to fling at it. The squirrel started away, uttering a broken noise that fell upon her sore heart like a taunt. Why did the little creature follow her? Why did it bend those sharp, black eyes upon her, with its head turned so mockingly upon one side? Was she never to be alone? Was the cruel animal still gibing at her through the chestnut-leaves?

The squirrel darted from bough to bough, and at last ran down the trunk of the chestnut. Mary followed it with eager glances till her eyes fell upon the root of the tree. The stone dropped from her hand, the angry color fled from her face, and stretching out her arms with a cry that perished on her lips she waited for the missionary to descend.

He came rather quickly, and the gentle serenity of his countenance was disturbed, but still a look of unutterable goodness rested upon it. When he reached Mary her eyes were flooded with tears, and she trembled from head to foot. His sympathy she could endure. His very look had opened the purest fountains of her heart again. She was not altogether alone.

“Crying, Mary, crying?” he said, in a tone of inquiry, rather than of reproach. “Who has taught you to weep?”

“Oh! father, father, what can I do? Where can I hide myself?” cried the poor girl, lifting her clasped hands piteously upward.

The missionary saw it all. For a moment the color left his lips, and his eyes were full of trouble to their azure depths. He sat down by her side, and drew her gently towards him.

“And this has driven you so far from home?” he said, smoothing her hair with one hand, which trembled among the golden tresses, for never had his sympathies been drawn more powerfully forth. “Who has done this cruel thing, Mary?”

She did not answer, but he felt a shudder pass over her frame as she made a vain effort to speak.

“Was it your playfellows at school?”

“I shall never have playfellows again,” broke from the trembling lips which seemed torn apart by the desolating words; “never again, for where does another girl like me live in the world? God has made no playfellow for me!”

The missionary allowed her to weep. He knew that a world of bitterness would be carried from her bosom with those tears.

“But God has made us for something better than playfellows to each other,” he said at last, taking her little hand in his.

She looked at him wistfully, and answered with unutterable sadness, “But I cannot be even that; I am alone!”

“No,” answered the missionary, “not alone—not alone, though you never heard another human voice—even here in the deep woods you would find something to love and help, too—never think yourself alone, Mary, while any creature that God has made is near.”

“But who will love me? Who will help me?” cried the girl, with a burst of anguish.

“Who will love you, Mary! Do not I love you? Does not your grandmother and sister love you?”

“But now—now that they know about this—that I am a hunchback, it will be all over.”

“But they have known it, Mary, ever since you were a little child. Well, well! we must not talk about it, but think how much every one at home has loved you.”

“And they knew it all—they saw it while I was blind, and loved me still,” murmured the girl, while great tears of gratitude rolled down her cheeks, “and they will love me always just the same—you promise me this?”

“Always the same, Mary!”

“Yes, yes—I see they have loved me always, more than if I were ever so beautiful—they were sorry for me; I understand!” There was a sting of bitterness in her voice. The love which came from compassion wounded her.

“But our Saviour loves his creatures most for this very reason. Their imperfections and feebleness appeal like an unuttered prayer to him. It is a beautiful love, Mary, that which strength gives to dependence, for it approaches nearest to that heavenly benevolence which the true soul always thirsts for.”

Mary lifted her eyes to his face as he spoke. The unshed tears trembled like diamonds within them. She became very thoughtful, and drooped slowly downward, coloring faintly beneath his eyes, as maidens sometimes blush at their own innocent thoughts when nothing but the eye of God is upon them.

“But there is another love, my father; I have seen it at the school and in the cabins, I have watched it as I have the mountain flowers, and thought that God meant this love for me, like the rest; but when I go among other girls, no one will ever think that I am one of them—no one but Edward Clark, and he only feels pity-love for me; to all the rest I am a hunchback.”

A look of great trouble came upon the face of the missionary. For some moments he did not answer, and the poor girl drooped by his side. The blush faded from the snow of her forehead, and she trembled all over with vague shame of the words she had spoken. His silence seemed like a reproach to her.

“My child!”—oh! with what holy sweetness the words fell from his lips—“my child, it is true; this love must never be yours.”

“Never!” echoed the pale lips of the child. “Never!”

“This dream of love, give it up, Mary, while it is but a dream,” added the missionary, in a firmer voice. “To many more than yourself it is a hope never, never realized. Do not struggle for it—do not pine for it—God help you! child—God help us all!”

The anguish in his voice thrilled her to the soul. She bent her forehead meekly to his knee, murmuring:

“I will try to be patient—but, oh! do not look at me so mournfully.”

He laid his hands softly under her forehead, and, lifting her face to his gazed mournfully upon it, as if his soul were looking far away through her eyes into the dim past.

“Father, believe me, I will try.”

His hands dropped downward at the sound of her voice, and his lips began to move, as if unuttered words were passing through them. Mary knew that he was praying, and her face drooped reverently downward. When or how this silence broke into words she never knew, but over her soul went the burning eloquence of his voice, carried heavenward by prayer—by the wind, and the rush of the mountain stream. The very breath lay still upon her lips as she listened, and she felt more like a winged angel close to the gate of heaven than the poor deformed girl, whose soul had, a few hours before, been so full of bitterness.

CHAPTER III
THE FOREST WALK

When the missionary arose from his knees—for to that position he had unconsciously fallen—Mary stood beside him, quiet and smiling.

“Come, my child,” he said, taking Mary by the hand, and leading her up from the ravine. “It is almost night, and you have wandered far from the island; see, the woods are already dusky. The birds and squirrels are settling down in the leaves; you would have been afraid to go home in the dark.”

“I might have been lost, but not afraid,” answered Mary, in a sad voice; “after this, darkness will be my best friend.”

“But the forest is full of Indians, Mary, and now, since the English have excited them against us, no white person is safe after dark; I will go home with you; but, after this, promise me never to come alone to the woods again.”

“The Indians will not harm me,” answered Mary, with a mournful smile; “they pity me, I think, and love me a little, too. I am not afraid of them; their tomahawks are not so sharp as Jason Wintermoot’s words were this morning.”

As she spoke there was a rustling among the bushes at their right, and through the purple gloom of the woods they saw a group of Indians crouching behind a rock, and glaring at them through the undergrowth. One had his rifle lifted with a dusky hand, creeping towards the rock; the others were poised for a spring. Mary saw them, and leaped upon a rock close by, protecting the missionary from the aim taken at his life.

“Not him—not him!” she cried, flinging up both arms in wild appeal; “shoot me! You don’t know how I long to die.”

The Indians looked at each other in dismay. The threatening rifle fell with a clang upon the rock, and instead of an assault the savages crept out from their ambush, lighting up the dusky ravine with their gorgeous war-dresses, and gathered around the young girl, like a flock of tropical birds surrendering themselves to the charms of a serpent.

Mary met them fearlessly; a wild, spiritual beauty lighted up her face. The Indians lost their ferocity, and looked on her with grave tenderness; one of them reached forth his hand, she laid hers in the swarthy palm, where it rested like a snowdrop on the brown earth; he looked down upon it, and smiled; her courage charmed him.

“The white bird is brave, the Great Spirit folds his wing over her which is pure like the snow,” he said, addressing his companions in their own language.

Mary knew a little of the Shawnee tongue, and looking up at the savage said, very gently:

“Why harm my father? The Great Spirit covers him, also, with a wing which is broad and white, like the clouds. Look in his face. Is he afraid?”

The Indians drew back, and looked fiercely at the missionary, gathering up their rifles with menacing gestures.

He understood their language well, and spoke to them with that calm self-possession which gives dignity to courage.

“My children,” he said, “what wrong have I done that you should wish to kill me?”

The leading savage set down his gun with a clang upon the rock.

“You have sat by the white man’s council-fire down yonder. The Great Father over the big water is our friend, but you hate the Indian, and will help them drive us through the wind gap into strange hunting grounds.”

“I am not your enemy. See, I carry no tomahawk or musket; my bosom is open to your knives. The Great Spirit has sent me here, and He will keep me free from harm.”

Unconsciously the missionary looked at the deformed girl as he spoke. The Indians followed his glance, and changed their defiant gestures.

“He speaks well. Mineto has sent his beautiful medicine spirit to guard him from our rifles. The medicine father of the Shawnees is dead, his lodge is empty. The white bird shall be our prophet. You shall be her brother, live in the great Medicine Lodge, and dream our dreams for us when we take the warpath. Do we speak well?”

The missionary pondered a moment before he spoke. He read more in these words than one not acquainted with Indian customs might have understood.

“Yes,” he said at last, “I will come to your Medicine Lodge, and tell you all the dreams which the Great Spirit sends to me. She, too, will love the Indians, and dream holy dreams for them, but not here, not in the Medicine Lodge. She must stay in Monockonok among the broken waters. The Great Spirit has built her lodge there, under the tall trees, where the Indians can seek her in their canoes. Go back to your council-fire, my children, before its smoke goes out. I will light the calumet, and smoke with you. Now the Great Spirit tells me to go with this child back to Monockonok. Farewell.”

He took Mary Derwent by the hand, turned his back on the menacing rifles without fear, and walked away unmolested.

Mary had wandered miles away from home; nothing but the superior knowledge of her guardian could have found her way back through all that dense and unequal forest. It was now almost nightfall; but a full moon had risen, and by its light this man, accustomed to the woods, guided their way back towards the river. But after the wildest of her excitement had worn away, Mary began to feel the toil of her long walk. She did not complain, however, and the missionary was unconscious of this overtax of strength till she sank down on a broken fragment of rock utterly exhausted. He stopped in great distress, and bent over her. She smiled, and attempted to speak, but the pale lids drooped over her eyes, and the strength ebbing completely from her limbs left them pale and limp. She lay before him entirely senseless, with the moonbeams falling over her like a winding-sheet.

Nothing but the angels of Heaven could see or understand the look of unutterable thankfulness which came to his noble features as the missionary stooped and took the young girl in his arms. A smile luminous as the moonlight that played upon it stole over his whole face, and the words that broke from his lips were sweet and tender, such as the Madonna might have whispered to her holy child.

He took no pains to bring her back to life, but when she did come to, soothed her with hushes, and laid her head tenderly upon his shoulder till she fell asleep, smiling like himself.

As he came in sight of Monockonok a swell of regretful tenderness swept all his strength away more surely than fatigue could have done. He sat down upon a fallen tree on the bank just opposite the island and looked down into the sweet face with a gaze of heavenly affection. His head drooped slowly down, he folded her closer, and pressed his lips upon the closed eyes, the forehead, the lips, and cheeks of the sleeping child with a passion of tenderness that shook his whole frame.

“Oh, my God, my God! forgive me if this is sinful! my soul aches under this excess of love; the very fountains of my life are breaking up! Father of heaven, I am thine, all thine, but she is here on my breast, and I am but human.”

Deep sobs broke away from his heart, almost lifting her from his bosom; tears rained down his face, and dropped thick and fast amid the waves of her hair.

His sobs aroused Mary from her slumber. She was not quite awake, but stirred softly and folded her arms about his neck. How the strong man trembled under the clasp of those arms! how he struggled and wrested against the weakness that had almost overpowered him, and not in vain! A canoe was moored under a clump of alders, just below him. It belonged to the island, and in that Mary must be borne to her home. He was obliged to row the canoe, and of course must awake her. Once more he pressed his lips upon her face, once more he strained her to his heart, and then with loving violence aroused her.

“Mary—come, little one, wake up, wake up! See how late it is! Grandmother will be frightened.”

“Let me alone—oh! please let me alone!” murmured the weary child.

“No, Mary, arouse yourself; you and I have slept and dreamed too long. There, there! look around. See how the moonlight ripples upon the river! Look at the island; there is a light burning in the cabin. They are anxious no doubt at your long stay. Come, child, let us be strong: surely you can walk to the river’s brink.”

Yes, Mary could walk again; that sweet sleep had given back her strength. She sat down in the canoe, tranquilized and happier than she had ever hoped to be again. The bitterness of the morning had entirely passed away. They floated on down the river a few minutes. Then the missionary bent to his oars, and the canoe shot across the silvery rapids, and drew up in a little cove below the house.

The missionary stepped on shore. Mary followed him.

“Are you happier now? Are you content to live as God wills it?” he said, extending his hand, while his eyes beamed upon her.

“Yes, father, I am content.”

“To live even without earthly love?”

Mary shrunk within herself—it takes more than a few words, a struggle, or a single prayer to uproot a desire for human love from a woman’s heart.

He did not reason with her, or upbraid her then, but only said:

“God will find a way—have no fear, all human beings have some road to happiness if they will but let the Heavenly Father point it out. Good-night Mary.”

“Good-night,” responded the young girl, while her eyes filled with grateful tears; “good-night, my father!”

He turned around, laid his hands on her head, and blessed her, then stepped into the canoe and disappeared along the path of silver cast downward by the moon. The young girl smiled amid her tears. How dark it was when he found her at noontide; how bright when he went away!

Mary Derwent entered that log-cabin a changed being. She scarcely understood herself, or anything that had filled her life up to that day. Her own nature was inexplicable. One great shock had thrust her forward, as it were, to a maturity of suffering; her smile became mournful and sad in its expression, as if the poor creature had become weary of life and of all living things. She never again joined in the childish sports of her companions.

CHAPTER IV
THE ISLAND COVE

The two sisters stood together under the willow trees that overhung the little cove from which Mary had landed with the missionary three years before. Both had grown into girlhood since then, and both had improved in loveliness; Jane in the bloom and symmetry of her person—Mary in that exquisite loveliness of countenance which touches the soul like music in a sound, or tints in a picture. Jane Derwent was just seventeen years old that day.

“And so you will go, Mary, dear—though this is my birthday? I have a great mind to cut the canoe loose and set it adrift.”

“And then how will your company get to the island?” said Mary Derwent, raising her eyes to the blooming face of her sister, while a quiet smile stole out from their blue depths.

“I don’t care for company! I don’t care for anything—you are so contrary—so hateful. You never stay at home when the young folks are coming—it’s too bad!” And Jane flung herself on the grass which surrounded the little cove where a bark canoe lay rocking in the water, and indulged her petulance by tearing up the strawberry-vines which her sister had planted there.

“Don’t spoil my strawberry-bed,” said Mary, bending over the wayward girl and kissing her forehead. “Come, be good-natured and let me go; I will bring you some honeysuckle-apples, and a whole canoe full of wood-lilies. Do say yes; I can’t bear to see you discontented to-day!”

“I would not care about it so much—though it is hard that you will never go to frolics, nor enjoy yourself like other folks—but Edward Clark made me promise to keep you at home to-day.”

A color, like the delicate tinting of a shell, stole into Mary’s cheek as it lay caressingly against the rich damask of her sister’s.

“If no one but Edward were coming I should be glad to stay,” she replied, in a soft voice; “but you have invited a great many, haven’t you? Who will be here from the village?”

Jane began to enumerate the young men who had been invited to her birthday party; they held precedence in her heart, and consequently in her speech; for, to own the truth, Jane Derwent was a perfect specimen of the rustic coquette; a beauty, and a spoiled one; but a warm-hearted, kind girl notwithstanding.

“There are the Ward boys, and John Smith, Walter Butler from the fort, and Jason Wintermoot——”

Jane stopped, for she felt a shiver run over the form around which her arms were flung as she pronounced the last name and saw the cheek of her sister blanch to the whiteness of snow.

“I had forgotten,” she said, timidly, after a moment; “I am sorry I asked him. You are not angry with me, Mary, are you?”

“Angry? No! I never am angry with you, Jane. I don’t want to refuse you anything on your birthday—but I will not meet these people. You cannot guess—you can have no idea of my sufferings when any one looks upon me except those I love very, very dearly.”

“That is just what they say,” replied Jane, while a flush of generous feeling spread over her forehead.

“What, who says?” inquired Mary, for her heart trembled with a dread that some allusion was threatened to her person.

After her question there was a moment’s silence. They had both arisen, and the deformed girl stood before her sister with a tremulous lip and a wavering, anxious eye.

Jane was quick-witted, and, with many faults, very kind of heart. When she saw the distress visible in her unfortunate sister’s face she formed her reply with more of tact and kind feeling than with strict regard to truth.

“Why, it is nothing,” she said; “the girls always loved you, and petted you so much when we were little children in school together that they don’t like it when you go away without seeing them. They think that you are grown proud since you have taken to reading and talking fine language. You don’t have to work like the rest of us, and they feel slighted, and think you put on airs.”

Tears stole into the eyes of the deformed girl, and a sudden light, the sunshine of an affectionate heart, broke over her face as she said:

“It is not that, my sister. I have loved them very much all these years that I have not seen them; but since that day—— Sister, you are very good; and, oh! how beautiful; but you cannot dream how a poor creature like myself feels when happy people are enjoying life together. Without sympathy, without companions, hunchbacked and crooked. Tell me, Jane, am I not hideous to look upon?”

This was the first time in her life that Mary had permitted a consciousness of her malformation to escape her in words. The question was put in a voice of mingled agony and bitterness, wrung from the very depths of her heart. She fell upon the grass as she spoke, and with her face to the ground lay grovelling at her sister’s feet, like some wounded animal; for now that the loveliness of her face was concealed her form seemed scarcely human.

All that was generous in the nature of Jane Derwent swelled in her heart as she bent over her sister. The sudden tears fell like rain, glistening in drops upon the warm damask of her cheeks and filling her voice with affectionate sobs as she strove to lift her from the ground; but Mary shrunk away with a shudder, and kneeling down Jane raised her head with gentle violence to her bosom.

“Hideous! Oh! Mary, how can you talk so? Don’t shake and tremble in this manner. You are not frightful nor homely; only think how beautiful your hair is. Edward Clark says he never saw anything so bright and silky as your curls—he said so; indeed he did, Mary; and the other day when he was reading about Eve, in the little book you love so well, he told grandmother that he fancied Eve must have had a face just like yours.”

“Did Edward say this?” murmured the poor deformed one as Jane half-lifted, half-persuaded her from the ground, and with one arm flung over her neck was pressing the face she had been praising to her own troubled bosom.

Poor Mary, though naturally tall, was so distorted that when she stood upright her head scarcely reached a level with the graceful bust of her sister, and Jane stooped low to plant reassuring kisses upon her forehead.

“Did he say it, Mary? Yes, he certainly did; and so did I say it. Look here.” And eagerly gathering the folds of a large shawl over the shoulders of the deformed, she gently drew her to the brink of the basin, where the canoes still lay moored. “Look there!” she exclaimed, as they bent together over the edge of the green sward; “can you wish for anything handsomer than that face? Dear, good Mary, look.”

An elm-tree waved its branches over them, and the sunshine came shimmering through the leaves with a wavy light. The river was tranquil as a summer sky, and the sisters were still gazing on the lovely faces speaking to theirs from its clear depths, when a canoe swept suddenly round the grassy promontory which formed one side of the cove.

With a dash of the oar the fairy skiff shot, like an arrow, into the basin, and its occupant, a young man of perhaps two-and-twenty, leaped upon the green sward. The sisters started from their embrace. A glad smile dimpled the round cheek of the younger as she stepped forward to meet the newcomer. But Mary drew her shawl more closely over her person, and shrunk timidly back, with a quickened pulse, a soft welcome beaming from her eyes, and her face deluged with a flood of soft, rosy color, which she strove to conceal with the tresses that fell about her like a golden mist.

“I have just come in time to keep you at home for once,” said the youth, approaching the timid girl, after having gaily shaken hands with her sister. “I am sure we shall persuade you——”

He was interrupted by a call from Jane, who had run off to the other side of the cove; no doubt with the hope of being speedily followed by her visitor.

“Come here, Edward, do, and break me some of this sweet-brier; it scratches my fingers so.”

Clark dropped Mary’s hand and went to obey this capricious summons.

“Don’t try to persuade Mary to stay,” said Jane, as she took a quantity of the sweet-brier from the hands of her companion. “She is as restless when we have company as the mocking-bird you gave us; and which we never could tame, besides,” she added, with a little hesitation, “Wintermoot will be here, and she don’t like him.”

“It were strange if she did,” replied the youth; and a frown passed over his fine forehead; “but, tell me, Jane, how it happened that you invited Col. Butler when you know that I dislike him almost as much as she does Wintermoot.”

Jane looked confused and, like most people when they intend to persist in a wrong, began to get into a passion.

“I am sure I thought I had the right to ask any one I pleased,” she said, petulantly and gathering her forehead into a frown.

“Yes, but one might expect that it would scarcely please you to encourage a man who has so often insulted your house with unwelcome visits; and Wintermoot—my blood boils when I think of the wretch! Poor Mary! I had hoped to see her enjoy herself to-day; but now she must wander off alone as usual. I have a great mind to go with her.”

And turning swiftly away from the angry beauty, Clark went to Mary, spoke a few words, and they stepped into his canoe together. But he had scarcely pushed it from the shore when Jane ran forward and leaped in after them.

“If you go, so will I!” she said angrily, seating herself in the bottom of the canoe.

Mary was amazed and perplexed. She looked into the stern, displeased face of the young man, and then at the sullen brow of her sister.

“What does this mean?” she inquired, gently; “what is the matter, Jane?”

Jane began to sob, but gave no answer, and they rowed across the river in silence. The canoe landed at the foot of a broken precipice that hung over the river like a ruined battlement. Clark assisted Mary to the shore, and was about to accompany her up the footpath, which wound over the precipice, but Jane, who had angrily refused his help to leave the boat, began to fear that she had carried her resentment too far, and timidly called him back.

A few angry words from the young man—expostulation and tears from the maiden, all of which a bend in the path prevented Mary observing; and then Clark went up the hill—told the solitary girl not to wander far—to be careful and not sit on the damp ground—and that he would come for her by sundown; the young folks would have left the island by that time. They were all going down to Wilkesbarre, to have a dance in the schoolhouse. He and Jane were going, but they would wait and take her home first.

Edward was almost out of breath as he said all this, and he appeared anxious to go back to the canoe. But Mary had not expected him to join her lonely wanderings, and his solicitude about her safety, so considerate and kind, went to her heart like a breath of summer air. She turned up the mountain-path, lonely and companionless; but very happy. Her eyes were full of pleasant tears, and her heart was like a flower unfolding to the sunshine. There is pleasure in complying with the slightest request from those we love; and Mary confined her ramble to the precipice and the shore, merely because Edward Clark had asked her not to wander far. She saw him land on the island with her sister while half-sitting, half-reclining on a crag of the broken rock, at whose foot she had landed. She saw the boat sent again and again to the opposite shore, returning each time laden with her former companions.

She was aroused by the rustling of branches over her head, followed by a bounding step, as of a deer in flight; then a young girl sprang out upon a point of rock which shot over the platform on which she lay, and bending over the edge gazed eagerly down upon the river.

Mary held her breath and remained motionless, for her poetical fancy was aroused by the singular and picturesque attitude of the figure. There was a wildness and grace in it which she had never witnessed before. At the first glance she supposed the stranger to be a wandering Indian girl belonging to some of the tribes that roamed the neighboring forests. But her complexion, though darker than the darkest brunette of our own race, was still too light for any of the savage nations yet seen in the wilderness. It was of a clear, rich, brown, and the blood glowed through the round cheeks like the blush on a ripe peach.

Her hair was long, profusely braided, and of a deep black; not the dull, lustreless color common to the Indians; but with a bloom upon it like that shed by the sunlight on the wing of a flying raven. She appeared to be neither Indian nor white, but of a mixed race. The spirited and wild grace of the savage was blended with a delicacy of feature and nameless elegance more peculiar to the whites. In her dress, also, might be traced the same union of barbarism and refinement—a string of bright scarlet berries encircling her head, and interwoven with the long braids of her hair, glanced in the sunlight as she moved her head, like a chain of dim rubies.

A robe of gorgeous chintz, where crimson and deep brown were the predominating colors, was confined at the waist by a narrow belt of wampum, and terminated a little below the knee in a double row of heavy fringe, leaving the flexible and slender ankles free and uncovered. Her robe fell open at the shoulders; but the swelling outline of her neck, thus exposed, was unbroken, except by a necklace of cherry-colored cornelian, from which a small heart of the same blood-red stone fell to her bosom. The round and tapering beauty of her arms was fully revealed and unencumbered by a single ornament. Her moccasins were of dressed deer-skin, fringed and wrought with tiny beads, interwoven with a vine of silk buds and leaves done in such needlework as was, in those days, only taught to the most refined and highly educated class of whites. Mary had never seen anything so exquisitely beautiful in its workmanship as that embroidery, or so brightly picturesque as the whole appearance of the stranger.

For more than a minute the wild girl retained the position assumed by her last bounding step. There was something statue-like in the tension of those rounded and slender limbs as she stood on the shelf of rock, bending eagerly over the edge, with her weight thrown on one foot and the other strained back, as if preparing for a spring. All the grace, but not the chilliness, of marble lived in those boldly poised limbs, so full of warm, healthy life. There was spirit and fire in their very repose, for after an eager glance up and down the river she settled back, and with her arms folded remained for a moment in an attitude of dejection and disappointment.

A merry laugh which came ringing over the waters from the island drew her attention to the group of revellers glancing in and out of the shrubbery which surrounded Mother Derwent’s dwelling. Flinging back her hair with a gesture of fiery impatience, she sprang upward and dragged down the branch of a young tree, which she grasped for support while throwing herself still more boldly over the very edge of the cliff.

Mary almost screamed with affright. But there was something grand in the daring of the girl, which aroused her admiration even more than her fear. She knew that the breaking of that slender branch would precipitate her down a sheer descent into the river. But she felt as if the very sound of a human voice would startle her into eternity.

Motionless with dread, she fixed her eyes, like a fascinated bird, on the strange being thus hovering over death, so fearless and so beautiful. All at once those bright, dark eyes kindled, one arm was flung eagerly outward—her red lips parted and a gush of music, like the song of a mocking-bird, but louder and richer, burst from them.

Mary started forward in amazement. Before she could lift her eyes to the cliff again, a low, shrill whistle came sharply up from the direction of the island. She caught one glance of those kindling cheeks and flashing eyes as the strange, wild girl leaped back from the cliff—a gleam of sunlight on her long hair as she darted into a thicket of wild cherry trees—and there was no sign of her remaining, save a rushing sound of the young trees, as the bent limb swayed back to its fellows. Again the notes, as of a wild, eager bird, arose from a hollow bank on the side of the mountain; and, after a moment, that shrill whistle was repeated from the water, and Mary distinctly heard the dipping of an oar.

She crept to the edge of the rock which had formed her concealment and looked down upon the river. A canoe rowed by a single oarsman was making its way swiftly to the island. She could not distinguish the face of the occupant; but there was a band of red paint around the edge of the canoe, and she remembered that Edward Clark’s alone was so ornamented. It was the same that had brought her from the island. Did the signal come from him—from Edward Clark? What had he in common with the wild, strange girl who had broken upon her solitude? A thrill of pain, such as she had never dreamed of before, shot through her heart as she asked these questions. She would have watched the landing of the canoe, but all strength suddenly left her, and she sunk upon a fragment of stone, almost powerless and in extreme suffering.

In a little more than an hour she saw the same solitary rower crossing the river, but with more deliberate motion. She watched him while he moored the canoe in the little cove, and caught another glimpse of him as he turned a corner of her dwelling and mingled with the group of young persons who were drinking tea on the green sward in front.

It was a weary hour to the deformed girl before the party broke up and were transported to the opposite shore, where farm-wagons stood ready to convey them to Wilkesbarre. The sun was almost down, and the island quiet again when she saw two persons coming from the house to the cove. She arose, and folding her shawl about her prepared to descend to the shore.

Mary had walked half-way down the ledge when she stopped abruptly in the path; for sitting on the moss beneath one of these pines was the strange girl who had so excited her wonder. Mary’s slow step had not disturbed her, and unconscious of a witness she was unbraiding the string of berries from her hair and supplying their place with a rope of twisted coral. The strings of scarlet ribbon with which she knotted it on her temple were bright, and had evidently never been tied before.

Mary’s heart beat painfully and she hurried forward, as if some fierce animal had sprung up in her path. An uncontrollable repulsion to that wild and beautiful girl, which she neither understood nor tried to account for, seized her. When she reached the shore the canoe with Edward Clark and her sister seated in it was making leisurely towards the mouth of the ravine, and she sat down on the shadowy side of an oak, to await their coming. Their approach was so noiseless that she did not know they had reached the shore till the voice of Edward Clark apprised her of it. He was speaking earnestly to her sister, and there was both agitation and deep tenderness in his voice—a breaking forth of the heart’s best feelings, which she had never witnessed in him before.

“No, Jane,” he said, in a resolute voice, shaken with a sorrowful tremor; “you must now choose between that man and me; there can be nothing of rivalry between us; I heartily despise him! I am not jealous—I could not be a creature so unworthy; but it grieves me to feel that you can place him for a moment on a level with yourself. If you persist in this degrading coquetry you are unworthy of the love which I have given you. Forgive me, Jane, if I speak harshly; don’t cry—it grieves me to wound your feelings, but——”

He was interrupted by a sound as of some one falling heavily to the ground. He leaped from the canoe, and there, behind the great oak, lay Mary Derwent helpless and insensible.

“She has wandered too far, and exhausted herself,” said the agitated young man as he bore her to the canoe. “Sit down, Jane, and take her head in your lap—your grandmother will know what to do for her.”

Jane reached forth her arms and received the insensible head on her bosom. She turned her face petulantly away from that of her lover, and repulsed him with sullen discontent when, in his attempts to restore Mary, his hand happened to touch hers.

“Set her down,” she said, pushing him indignantly away. “Attend to your oars; we neither want your help or your ill-natured grumblings. I tell you, Ned Clark, you are just the Grossest creature I ever saw. Take that for your pains!”

Clark did not answer this insolent speech, but gravely took up the oars and pushed off.

They were half-way across the river when Mary began to recover animation. Edward laid down his oar, and taking her hand in his was about to speak, but she drew it away with a faint shudder, and burying her face in her sister’s bosom remained still and silent as before.

CHAPTER V
THE TEMPTER AND THE TEMPEST

Tahmeroo, the Indian girl, was sitting under the pine as Mary Derwent had left her. With the coral but half twisted in her hair, she had paused in her graceful task, and sinking gently back to the bank of moss which formed her seat reclined on one elbow, with her long tresses unbraided and floating in wavy masses over her person. She was yielding to the repose of a soft and dreamy reverie—new and very sweet to her wild, young heart—when the sound of voices and the dash of an oar aroused her. She started to her feet and listened. The fire flashed back to those large dark eyes but late so pleasant and soft in their expression, and a rich crimson rushed to her cheek. The voices ceased for a moment; then were renewed, and the rapid beat of the paddle became still more audible.

Tahmeroo sprang forward and ran up to a point of the hill which commanded a view of the river. The little canoe, with its band of red paint, was making from the shore, and in it sat Jane Derwent, with the head of the deformed girl resting in her lap. The back of the oarsman was towards the shore; his head was bent, and the eyes, the beautiful eyes of Jane Derwent were fixed on him with an expression which Tahmeroo’s heart, unlearned as it was, taught her to understand. A storm of surprise, anger and fear rushed through the heart of the young Indian. The oarsman turned his head, and the face was revealed. Then a smile, vivid and bright as a burst of sunshine after a tempest, broke over her features.

Tahmeroo breathed deeply and turned away. It seemed as if an arrow had been withdrawn from her heart by the sight of that face. She hurried down the hill towards a clump of black alders that overhung the river’s brink and unmoored a light canoe hitherto concealed beneath the dark foliage. Placing herself in the bottom, she gave two or three vigorous strokes with the paddle, and shot like a bird up the stream.

As Tahmeroo proceeded up the river the scenery, till then half-pastoral, half-sublime, became more savage and gloomy in its aspect. Huge rocks shot up against the sky in picturesque grandeur; the foliage which clothed them grew dusky in the waning light and fell back to the ravines in dark, heavy shadows. A gloom hung about the towering precipices, and the thick masses of vegetation, like funeral drapery, swathing the pillars and wild arches of a monastic ruin. It was the darkness of a gathering tempest. There was something sublime and almost awful in the gradual and silent mustering of the elements.

Tahmeroo rested for a moment as she entered the rocky jaws of the mountain, and as her frail bark rocked to the current of wind which swept down the gorge she looked around with a feeling of hushed terror. A mountain, cleft in twain to the foundation, towered to the sky on either hand—bold, bleak and sombre. Through the rent, down hundreds of feet from the summit, crept the deep river stealthily and slow, like a huge serpent winding himself around the bulwark of a stronghold. The darkness of the forests was so dense, and the clouds so heavy, that there was nothing to distinguish the outline of the murky waters from the majestic ramparts through which they glided. All was wild, solemn and gloomy.

As the Indian girl looked upward the clouds swept back for a moment and the last rays of sunset fell with a glaring light on the bold summit of the mountain, rendering by contrast the depths of the chasm more dreary in its intense shadow.

The threatened storm had seemingly passed over, and a few stars trembled in the depths of the sky when she moored her canoe in a little inlet, washed up into the mouth of a narrow ravine which opened on the river’s brink.

Tahmeroo tore away the dry brambles and brushwood which clothed the entrance of the defile, and made her way through a scarcely defined footpath up the hillside. Through this ravine rushed a mountain torrent, known to the Indians as the Falling Spring, which filled the whole forest with its silvery tumult.

Tahmeroo kept close to the banks of this torrent, helping herself forward by the brushwood and trailing vines that grew thickly on its margin. Nothing less surefooted than an antelope could have forced a passage through the broken rocks and steep precipices which guarded the passage of this stream up to its source in Campbell’s Ledge. A little way from the river it came, with a single leap, through a chasm in the rocks, and lost itself in a storm of white spray among the mossy boulders which choked up the ravine.

The storm had mustered again so blackly that Tahmeroo could scarcely see her course, but lost herself among the rocks and young pines below the fall. Still she climbed upward, leaping from rock to rock, till the sheer precipices that walled in the cataract on either side obstructed her passage, and she stood poised half-way up, uncertain which way to turn or how to move.

A flash of lightning revealed her position, kindled up the young trees to a lurid green; gave the slippery brown precipices to view, and shot in and out of the foaming torrent as it leaped by like flashes of fire, tearing a snowdrift into flakes again and scattering it to the wind.

The lightning revealed her peril and her path. She sprang back from the precipice, from which the next leap would have precipitated her downward with the cataract into the depths of the ravine, and tore her way into the bosom of the hills, keeping Campbell’s Ledge on the right.

A less vigorous form would have fainted beneath the toil of that mountain-pass; but the young Indian scarcely thought of fatigue; for a dull, moaning sound came up from the depths of the forest, like the hollow beat of a far-off ocean; the pent-up thunder muttered and rumbled among the black clouds, floating like funeral banners above her, every other instant pierced and torn with arrowy lightning. These signs of the storm gathering so fearfully about the mountains terrified and bewildered the Indian girl. Though a wild rover of the forest, she had been gently nurtured, and for the first time in her life was alone among the hills after nightfall.

At length she stood on a high ledge of rocks, panting and in despair; she had lost the path that led to the Indian encampment, and found herself on the sweep of a mighty precipice, far above the valley. After one wild, hopeless look upon the sky, she sunk to the ground and, burying her face in her hands, muttered, in a trembling and husky voice:

“Tahmeroo has been wicked. She has acted a lie. The Great Spirit is very angry. Why should she strive to shut out his voice? Tahmeroo can die.”

While she spoke there was a hush in the elements and the sound of many hoarse, guttural voices arose from the foot of the ledge. The terrified Indian lifted her head, and a wild, doubtful joy gleamed over her face as the lightning revealed it, with the damp, unbraided hair floating back from the pallid temples, the lips parted, and the eyes charged with terror, doubt and eager joy. She listened intently for a moment, then sunk cautiously to the ground as one who fears to break a pleasant delusion, and crept to the edge of the rock.

FALLING SPRING

A dozen watch-fires flashed up in a semicircle, flinging a broad light over the whole enclosure and gleaming redly on the waving vines, the weeping birches, and the budding hemlocks that intermingled along its broken ramparts. A hundred swarthy forms, half-naked and hideously painted, were moving about, and others lay crouching in the grass, apparently terrified by the tempest gathering so blackly above them.

The untrodden grass and fresh herbage told that this hollow had recently been made a place of encampment; yet, in the enclosure was one lodge, small and but rudely constructed—a sylvan hut, more picturesque than any cabin to be found in the settlements. How recently it had been constructed might be guessed by the green branches yet fresh on the half-hewn logs. A score of savage hands had been at work upon it the whole day, for the Chief of the Shawnees never rested in the open air with the lower members of his tribe when his fierce mother, his haughty wife, or beautiful daughter was of his hunting party.

Tahmeroo had wandered upward from the path which led to the encampment. She had madly clambered to the highest chain of rocks which surrounded the enclosure, when she should have made her way around its base to the opening which gave egress to the forest. She arose from the edge of the rock, where she had been lying, high above the encampment, and was about to descend to the path she had missed, when a sound like the roar and tramp of a great army came surging up from the forest. The tall trees swayed earthward, flinging their branches and green leaves to the whirlwind as it swept by. Heavy limbs were twisted off, and mighty trunks, splintered midway, mingled the sharp crash of their fall with the hoarse roar of the tempest. The thunder boomed among the rocks, peal after peal, and the quick lightning darted through the heaving trees like fiery serpents wrangling with the torn foliage.

The very mountain seemed to tremble beneath the maiden’s feet. She threw herself upon the ledge, and with her face buried in its moss lay motionless, but quaking at heart, as the whirlwind rushed over her.

A still more fearful burst of the elements struck upon the heights, lifted a stout oak from its anchorage and hurled it to the earth. The splintered trunk fell with a crash, and the topmost boughs bent down the young saplings with a rushing sweep and fell like the wings of a great bird of prey, above the prostrate Indian. She sprang upward with a cry, and seizing the stem of a vine swung herself madly over the precipice. Fortunately the descent was rugged, and many a jutting angle afforded a foothold to the daring girl as she let herself fearlessly down—now clinging among the leaves of the vine—now grasping the sharp point of a rock, and dropping from one cleft to another. Twice she forced herself back, as if she would have sunk into the very rock, and dragged the heavy vines over her, when a fresh thunder-burst rolled by, or a flash of lightning blazed among the leaves; but when they had passed she again swung herself downward, and finally dropped unharmed upon the grass back of her father’s lodge.

The enclosure was now perfectly dark; for the rain had extinguished the watch-fires and the lightning but occasionally revealed a group of dark forms cowering together, awed by the violence of the tempest, and rendered abject by superstitious dread.

A twinkling light broke through the crevices of the lodge; but Tahmeroo lingered in the rain, for now that the fierceness of the storm was over she began to have a new fear—the dread of her mother’s stern presence. Cautiously, and with timid footsteps, she advanced to the entrance and lifted the huge bear-skin that covered it. She breathed freely; for there was no one present save her father, the great Chief of the Shawnees. He was sitting on the ground, with his arms folded on his knees, and his swarthy forehead buried in his robe of skins. The heart of the Indian King was sorely troubled, for he knew that the wing of the Great Spirit was unfolded in its wrath above his people.

Tahmeroo crept to the extremity of the lodge and sat down in silence upon the ground. She saw that preparations had been made for her comfort. A pile of fresh berries and a cake of cornbread lay on a stool nearby, and a couch of boughs woven rudely together stood in the corner heaped with the richest furs and overspread with a covering of martin-skins lined and bordered with fine scarlet cloth. A chain of gorgeous beadwork linked the deep scallops on the border, and heavy tassels fell upon the grass from the four corners. The savage magnificence of that couch was well worthy the daughter of a great chief.

Another couch, but of less costly furs, and without ornament, stood at the opposite extremity. Tahmeroo threw one timid look towards it, then bent her head, satisfied that it was untenanted, and that her mother was indeed absent. As if suddenly recollecting herself, she half-started from the ground and disentangled the string of coral from her damp hair. With her eyes fixed apprehensively on the chief, she thrust it under the fur pillows of her couch, and stole back to her former position.

Tahmeroo had scarcely seated herself when the bear-skin was flung back from the entrance of the lodge and Catharine, the wife of the Shawnee chief, presented herself in the opening. The light from a heap of pine knots fell on the woman’s face as she entered; but it failed to reveal the maiden where she sat in the shadowy side of the lodge.

The chief lifted his head and uttered a few words in the Indian tongue, but received no answer; while his wife gave one quick look around the lodge, then sallied back, clasped her hands tightly and groaned aloud.

Tahmeroo scarcely breathed, for never had she seen her mother so agitated. It was, indeed, a strange sight—those small, finely cut features usually so stern and cold, working with emotion—the pallid cheek, the high forehead, swollen and knitted at the brows—the trembling mouth—the eyes heavy with anguish. This was a sight which Tahmeroo had never witnessed before. And this was the stern, haughty woman—the white Indian—who ruled the Shawnee braves with despotic rigor—whose revenge was deadly, and whose hate was a terror. This was Catharine Montour!

When Tahmeroo heard her name mingled with the lamentations of her mother, she started forward, exclaiming, with tremulous and broken earnestness: “Mother, oh! mother, I am here!”

A burst of fierce thanksgiving broke from the lips of Catharine. She caught her daughter to her heart and kissed her wildly again and again.

“Thank God, oh! thank my God! I am not quite alone!” she exclaimed; and tears started in the eyes that had not known them for twenty summers.

Without a word of question as to her strange absence, Catharine drew her child to the couch, and seeing the bread and the berries yet untasted she forced her to eat while she wrung the moisture from her hair and took away the damp robe. She smoothed the cushions of crimson cloth that served as pillows, and drawing the coverlet of martin-skins over the form of her child sat beside her till she dropped to a gentle slumber. Then she heaped fresh knots on the burning pine and changed her own saturated raiment.

The sombre chief threw himself upon the unoccupied heap of furs, and Catharine was left alone with her thoughts. Long and sad were the vigils of that stern watcher; yet they had a good influence on her heart. There was tenderness and regret—nay, almost repentance—in her bosom as she gazed on the slumbers of her child—the only being on earth whom she dared to love. More than once she pressed her lips fondly to the forehead of the sleeper, as if to assure herself of her dear presence after the frightful dangers of the storm. She remained till after midnight, pondering upon past events with the clinging tenacity of one who seldom allowed herself to dwell on aught that could soften a shade of her haughty character; at length she was about to throw herself by the side of her daughter, more from the workings of unquiet thoughts than from a desire for rest. But the attempt disturbed the slumbering girl. She turned restlessly on her couch, and oppressed by its warmth pushed away the covering.

Catharine observed that the cheek which lay against the scarlet cloth was flushed and heated. She attempted to draw the pillow away, when her fingers became entangled in the string of coral concealed beneath it. Had a serpent coiled around her hand it could not have produced a more startling effect. She shook it off, and drew hastily back, as if something loathsome had clung to her. Then she snatched up the ornament, went to the pile of smouldering embers, stirred them to a flame and examined it minutely by the light. Her face settled to its habitual expression of iron resolution as she arose from her stooping posture. Her lips were firmly closed, and her forehead became calm and cold; yet there was more of doubt and sorrow than of anger in her forced composure.

She returned to the couch and placed herself beside it, with the coral still clenched in her hand. Her face continued passionless, but her eyes grew dim as she gazed on the sleeper; thoughts of her own youth lay heavily upon her heart.

Tahmeroo again turned restlessly on her pillow, her flushed cheeks dimpled with a smile, and she murmured softly in her sleep. Catharine laid her hand on the round arm, flung out upon the martin-skins, and bent her ear close to the red and smiling lips, thus betraying with their gentle whisperings the thoughts that haunted the bosom of the sleeper.

Tahmeroo dreamed aloud. A name was whispered in her soft, broken English, coupled with words of endearment and gentle chiding. The name was spoken imperfectly, and Catharine bent her ear still lower, as if in doubt that she had heard aright. Again that name was pronounced, and now there was no doubt; the enunciation was low, but perfectly distinct. The mother started upright; her face was ashy pale, and she looked strangely corpse-like in the dusky light. She snatched a knife from its sheath in her girdle, and bent a fierce glance on the sleeper. A moment the blade quivered above the heart of her only child, then the wretched woman flung it from her with a gesture of self-abhorrence, and sinking to the ground buried her face in both hands. After one fierce shudder she remained motionless as a statue.

It was more than an hour before that stern face was lifted again; shade after shade of deep and harrowing agony had swept over it while buried in the folded arms, and now it was very pale, but with a gentler expression upon it. She laid a hand on the rounded shoulder, from which the covering had been flung, passed the other quickly over her eyes and awoke the sleeper.

“Tahmeroo,” she said, but her voice was low and husky, and it died away in her throat.

The maiden started to her elbow and looked wildly about. When she saw her mother with the string of red coral in her hand she sunk back and buried her face in the pillow.

“Tahmeroo, look up!” said the mother, in a soft, low voice, from which all traces of emotion had flown. “Has Tahmeroo dreams which she does not tell her mother? The white man’s gift is under her pillow—whence came it?”

A blush spread over the face, neck and bosom of the young girl, and she shrunk from the steady gaze of her mother. She was sensible of no wrong, save that of concealment; yet her confusion was painful as guilt. Catharine had compassion on her embarrassment, and turned away her eyes.

“Tahmeroo,” she said, in a voice still more gentle and winning, “tell me all—am I not your mother? Do I not love you?”

The young Indian girl rose and looked timidly towards the couch of the Shawnee Chief.

“Does my father sleep?” and her eyes again fell beneath the powerful glance which she felt to be fixed upon her.

“Yes, he sleeps; speak in English, and have no fear.”

Catharine went to the heap of blazing pine and flung ashes on it; then returned to her daughter, folded her to her bosom, and for half an hour the low voice of Tahmeroo alone broke the stillness of the lodge.

Scarcely had Catharine interrupted the confession of her child with a word of question. She must have been powerless from emotion, for more than once her breath came quick and gaspingly; and the heavy throbbing of her heart was almost audible at every pause in that broken narrative. Yet her voice was strangely cold and calm when she spoke.

“And you saw him again this day?”

“Yes, mother.”

“Did he tell you to keep these meetings from my knowledge?”

“He said the Great Spirit would visit me with his thunder if I but whispered it to the wind.”

“The name—tell me the name once more; but low, I would not hear it aloud. Whisper it in my ear—yet the hiss of a serpent were sweeter,” she muttered.

Tahmeroo raised her lips to her mother’s ear and whispered, as she was commanded. She felt a slight shudder creep over the frame against which she leaned, and all was still again.

“You first saw this—this man when we were at the encampment on the banks of Seneca Lake three moons since, and I was absent on a mission to Sir William Johnson: did I hear aright in this?” questioned the mother, after a few minutes of silence.

“It was there I first saw him, mother.”

“Listen to me, Tahmeroo: were I to command you never again to see this man, could you obey me?”

The young Indian started from her mother’s arms, and the fire of her dark eyes flashed even in the half-smothered light.

“Never see him? What, tear away all this light from my own heart? Obey? No, mother, no. Put me out from my father’s lodge—make me a squaw of burden, the lowest woman of our tribe—give me to the tomahawk, to the hot fire—but ask me not to rend the life from my bosom. The white blood which my heart drank from yours must curdle that of the Indian when his child gives or takes love at the bidding of anything but her own will! No, mother, I could not obey—I would not.”

Catharine Montour was struck dumb with astonishment. Was she, the despotic ruler of a fierce war-tribe, to be braved by her own child? The creature she had loved and cherished with an affection so deep and passionate—had she turned rebellious to her power? Her haughty spirit aroused itself; the gladiator broke from her eyes as they were bent on the palpitating and half-recumbent form of Tahmeroo.

The girl did not shrink from the fierce gaze, but met it with a glance of resolute daring. The young eaglet had begun to plume its wing! There was something of wild dignity in her voice and gesture, which assorted well with the curbless strength of her mother’s spirit.

Catharine Montour had studied the human heart as a familiar book, and she knew that it would be in vain to contend with the spirit so suddenly aroused in the strength of its womanhood. She felt that her power over that heart must hereafter be one of love unmixed with fear—an imperfect and a divided power. The heart of the strong woman writhed under the conviction, but she stretched herself on the couch without a word of expostulation. Her own fiery spirit had sprung to rapid growth in the bosom of her child; passions akin to those buried in her experience had shot up, budded and blossomed, in a night time. The stern mother trembled when she thought of the fruit which, in her own life, had turned to ashes in the ripening.

When Tahmeroo awoke in the morning the lodge was empty. Her mother had left the encampment at early dawn.

CHAPTER VI
THE MISSIONARY’S CABIN

The history of Wyoming is interwoven with that of the Indian missionary whose paternal care had so long protected the family on Monockonok Island. Like Zinzendorf, his life was one errand of mercy, alike to the heathen and the believer. For years he had served as a link of union between the savage life of the woods and the civilization of the plains.

While a comparatively young man, he had come among the Six Nations nameless and unarmed, with his life in his hand, ready to live or die at his post. His home was in the wilderness; sometimes he passed through the white settlements, preached in their schoolhouses and slept in their cabins; but it was always as a guest; his mission lay with the forest children, and in the wilds where they dwelt was his home.

Almost the entire portion of years which had elapsed since his encounter with Mary Derwent in the hills, he had spent among the savages that kept possession of broad hunting grounds beyond the Wind Gap. But a movement of the tribes toward Wyoming, where a detachment of their own people from about Seneca Lake had been appointed to meet them in council, filled him with anxiety for his friends in the valley, and he came back also to watch over their safety. He knew what the settlers were ignorant of as yet—that the Shawnees were about to unite with the Tories, whose leader lay at Wintermoot Fort, and that great peril threatened the inhabitants of Wyoming in this union.

This man was alone in a log-cabin which Zinzendorf had once occupied on a curving bank of the Susquehanna, between Wilkesbarre and Monockonok Island. His face, always sad and merciful, now bore an anxious expression. The patient sweetness of his mouth was a little disturbed. He was pondering over the hostile attitude threatened by the Indians against the whites, and that subject could not be otherwise than a painful one.

The hut was small, and but for recent repairs would have been in ruins. It consisted only of one room. A deal-box stood in one corner, filled with books and rolls of manuscript. Two stools and a rude table, with a few cooking utensils, were the only remaining furniture. The missionary sat by the table, implements for writing were before him, and the pages of a worn Bible lay open, which, after a little while, he began to read.

It was a picture of holy thought and quiet study; but the crackling of branches and the sound of approaching footsteps interrupted its beautiful tranquillity.

The silvery flow of water from a spring close by was broken by the sound; the birds fluttered away from their green nestling places in the leaves, and a half-tamed fawn, which had been sleeping in a tuft of fern-leaves, started up, gazed a moment on the intruder with his dark, intelligent eye, and dashed up the river’s bank as she crossed the threshold of the lowly dwelling.

The missionary looked up as the stranger entered, and a feeling of astonishment mingled with the graciousness which long habit had made a portion of his nature. He arose, and with a slight inclination of the head placed the stool, on which he had been sitting, for her accommodation.

The intruder bent her head in acknowledgment of the courtesy, but remained standing. She was a woman majestic in her bearing, of well-developed form, and somewhat above the middle height; her air was courtly and graceful, but dashed with haughtiness approaching to arrogance. She had probably numbered forty years; her face, though slightly sunbrowned, bore traces of great beauty, in spite of its haughty expression. The mouth had been accustomed to smiles in its youth, and though an anxious frown clouded the broad forehead, it was still beautifully fair. The missionary had spent his life amid the aristocracy of European courts, and had passed from thence to the lowly settlement, and to the still more remote Indian encampment; but there was something in the appearance of this strange woman that filled him with vague uneasiness, and he looked upon her with a sort of terror. Her air and dress were not strictly those of any class with which he had as yet become familiar. There was wildness mingled with the majesty of her presence, and her rich and picturesque attire partook at once of the court and the wigwam.

Her long, golden, and still abundant hair was wreathed in braids around her head, and surmounted by a small coronet of gorgeous feathers. A serpent of fine, scaly gold, the neck and back striped and variegated with minute gems, was wreathed about the mass of braids on one side of her head, and formed a knot of slender coils where it clasped the coronet. There was something startlingly like vitality in these writhing folds when the light struck them, and the jewelled head shot out from the feathers and quivered over the pale temple with startling abruptness. There was an asp-like glitter in the sharp, emerald eye, and the tiny jaw seemed full of subtle venom. It was a magnificent and rare ornament to be found in the solitude of an American forest; yet scarcely less remarkable than the remainder of the strange woman’s apparel.

A robe of scarlet cloth, bordered with the blackest lynx fur, was girded at the waist by a cord of twisted silk, and fell back at the shoulders in lapels of rich black velvet. Above the fur border ran a wreath of embroidery, partly silk, partly wampum, but most exquisitely wrought in garlands of mountain flowers, with tiny golden serpents knotting them together and creeping downward, as it were, to hide themselves in the fur. It had loose, hanging sleeves, likewise lined with velvet, beneath which the white and still rounded arm gleamed out in strong contrast.

A serpent, mate to the one on her head, but glowing with still more costly jewels, coiled around the graceful swell of her right arm, a little below the elbow, but its brilliancy was concealed by the drapery of the sleeve, except when the arm was in motion. She wore elaborately wrought moccasins lined with crimson cloth, but the embroidery was soiled with dew, and the silken thongs with which they had been laced to the ankle had broken loose in the rough path through which she had evidently travelled.

The missionary stood by the table, while his visitor cast a hasty glance around the apartment and turned her eyes keenly on his face.

“I am not mistaken,” she said, slowly withdrawing her gaze. “You are the godly man of whom our people speak—the Indian missionary?”

The man of God bent his head in reply.

“You should be, and I suppose are, an ordained minister of the church?” she resumed.

“I am, madam.”

His voice was deep-toned and peculiarly sweet. The woman started as it met her ear; a gleam of unwonted expression shot over her features, and she fixed another penetrating glance on his face, as if some long-buried recollection had been aroused; then, satisfied with the scrutiny, she turned her eyes away, and drawing a deep breath spoke again.

“I ask no more than this; of what church matters little. But have you authority to perform marriages after the established law?”

“I have; but my services are seldom required. I mingle but little with the whites of the settlement, and Indians have their peculiar forms, which, to them, are alone binding,”

“True,” replied the woman, with a slight wave of the hand; “these forms shall not be wanting; all the bonds of a Christian church and savage custom will scarcely yield me security.”

She spoke as if unconscious of a second presence, and again abruptly addressed the missionary.

“Your services are needed in the Shawnee encampment a few miles back in the mountains. A guide shall be sent for you at the appointed time. Stay in this place during the next twenty-four hours, when you will be summoned.”

The missionary, though a humble man, was by no means wanting in the dignity of a Christian gentleman. He was displeased with the arrogant and commanding tone assumed by his singular visitor, and threw a slight degree of reproof into his manner when he answered.

“Lady, if the welfare of a human being—if the safety of an immortal soul can be secured by my presence, I will not hesitate to trust myself among your people, though they come here on an errand I can never approve; but for a less important matter I cannot promise to wait your pleasure.”

“Rash man! do you know who it is you are braving?” said the woman, fixing her eyes sternly on his face. “If your life is utterly valueless, delay but a moment in following the guide which I shall send, and you shall have the martyrdom you seem to brave! Catharine Montour’s will has never yet been disputed within twenty miles of her husband’s tent without frightful retribution.”

The missionary started at the mention of that name, but he speedily regained his composure, and answered her calmly and with firmness.

“Threats are powerless with me, lady. The man who places himself unarmed and defenceless in the midst of a horde of savages can scarcely be supposed to act against his conscience from the threat of a woman, however stern may be her heart, and however fearful her power. Tell me what the service is which I am required to perform, and then you shall have my answer.”

The haughty woman moved towards the door with an angry gesture, but returned again, and with more courtesy in her manner seated herself on the stool which had been placed for her.

“It is but just,” she said, “that you should know the service which you are required to perform. There is in the camp now lying beneath Campbell’s Ledge a maiden of mixed blood, my child—my only child; from the day that she first opened her eyes to mine in the solemn wilderness, with nothing but savage faces around me, with no heart to sympathize with mine, that child became a part of my own life. For years I had loved nothing; but the tenderness almost dead in my heart broke forth when she was born, the sweet feelings of humanity came back, and the infant became to me an idol. In the wide world I had but one object to love, and for the first time in a weary life affection brought happiness to me. You may be a father; think of the child who has lain in your bosom year after year, pure and gentle as a spring blossom, who has wound herself around your heart-strings—think of her, when dearest and loveliest, stolen from your bosom, and her innocent thoughts usurped by another.”

“Forbear—in mercy forbear!” said the missionary, in a voice of agony that for an instant silenced the woman.

Catharine looked up and saw that his eyes were full of tears; her own face was fearfully agitated, and she went on with a degree of energy but little in keeping with the pathos of her last broken speech.

“A white, one of my own race, came to the forest stealthily, like a thief, and with our Indian forms, which he taught her to believe were a bond of marriage among his people, also lured the heart of my child from her mother. Now, I beseech you, for I see that you are kind and feeling—I was wrong to command—come to the camp at nine to-night, for then and there shall my child be lawfully wedded.”

“I will be there at the hour,” replied the missionary, in a voice of deep sympathy. “Heaven forbid that I should refuse to aid in righting the wronged, even at the peril of life.”

“My own head shall not be more sacred in the Shawnee camp than yours,” said Catharine, with energy.

“I do not doubt it; and were it otherwise I should not shrink from a duty. I owe an atonement for the evil opinion I had of you. A heart which feels dishonor so keenly cannot delight in carnage and blood.”

“Can they repeat these things of me?” inquired Catharine, with a painful smile; “they do me deep wrong. Fear not; I appear before you with clean hands. If the heart is less pure it has sufficiently avenged itself; if it has wronged others, they have retribution; has not the love of my child gone forth to another? Am I not alone?”

“Lady,” said the missionary, with deep commiseration in his look and voice, for he was moved by her energetic grief, “this is not the language of a savage. Your speech is refined, your manner noble. Lady, what are you?”

There are seasons when the heart will claim sympathy, spite of all control which a will of iron may place upon it. This power was upon the heart of Catharine Montour.

“Yes, I will speak,” she muttered, raising her hand and pressing it heavily to her eyes. The motion flung back the drapery of the sleeve, and the light flashed full on the jewelled serpent coiled around her arm. The missionary’s eyes fell upon it, and he sallied back against the logs of the hut, with a death-like agony in his face.

Catharine Montour was too deeply engrossed by her own feelings to observe the strange agitation which had so suddenly come upon the missionary. She seated herself on the stool, and with her face buried in her robe remained minute after minute in deep silence, gathering strength to unlock the tumultuous secrets of her heart once more to a mortal’s knowledge.

When she raised her face there was nothing in the appearance of her auditor to excite attention. He still leaned against the rude wall, a little paler than before, but otherwise betraying no emotion, save that which a good man might be supposed to feel in the presence of a sinful and highly gifted fellow-creature.

She caught his pitying and mournful look fixed so earnestly upon her face as she raised it from the folds of her robe, and her eyes wavered and sunk beneath its sorrowful intensity. There was a yearning sympathy in his glance, which fell upon her heart like sunshine on the icy fetters of a rivulet; it awed her proud spirit, and yet encouraged confidence; but it was not till after his mild voice had repeated the question—“Lady, confide in me; who and what are you?”—that she spoke.

When she did find voice it was sharp, and thrilled painfully on the ear of the listener. The question aroused a thousand recollections that had long slumbered in the life of this wretched woman. She writhed under it, as if a knot of scorpions had suddenly begun to uncoil in her heart.

“What am I? It is a useless question. Who on earth can tell what he is, or what a moment shall make him? I am that which fate has ordained for me: Catharine Montour, the wife of Gi-en-gwa-tah, a great chief among his people. If at any time I have known another character, it matters little. Why should you arouse remembrances which may not be forced back to their lethargy again? I ask no sympathy, nor seek counsel; let me depart in peace.”

With a sorrowful and deliberate motion she arose and would have left the cabin, but the missionary laid his hand gently on her arm and drew her back.

“We cannot part thus,” he said. “The sinful have need of counsel, the sorrowing of sympathy. The heart which has been long astray requires an intercessor with the Most High.”

“And does the God whom you serve suffer any human heart to become so depraved that it may not approach his footstool in its own behalf? Is the immaculate purity of Jehovah endangered by the petition of the sinful or the penitent that you offer to mediate between me and my Creator? No! if I have sinned, the penalty has been dearly paid. If I have sorrowed, the tears shed in solitude have fallen back on my own heart and frozen there! I ask not intercession with the being you worship; and I myself lack the faith which might avail me, were I weak enough to repine over the irredeemable past. I have no hope, no God—wherefore should I pray?”

“This hardiness and impiety is unreal. There is a God, and despite of your haughty will and daring intellect you believe in him; aye, at this moment, when there is denial on your lips!”

“Believe—aye, as the devils, perchance; but I do not tremble!” replied the daring woman, with an air and voice of defiance.

The missionary fixed his eyes with stern and reproving steadiness on the impious woman. She did not shrink from his glance, but stood up, her eyes braving his with a forced determination, her brow locked in defiance beneath its gorgeous coronet, and a smile of scornful bitterness writhing her mouth. Her arms were folded over her bosom, flushed by the reflection of her robe, and the jewelled serpent glittered just over her heart, as if to guard it from all good influences. She seemed like a beautiful and rebellious spirit thrust out forever from the sanctuary of heaven.

A man less deeply read in the human heart, or less persevering in his Christian charities, would have turned away and left her, as one utterly irreclaimable, but the missionary was both too wise and too good thus to relinquish the influence he had gained. There was something artificial in the daring front and reckless impiety of the being before him, which betrayed a strange, but not uncommon, desire to be supposed worse than she really was.

With the ready tact of a man who has made character a study, he saw that words of reproof or authority were unlikely to soften a heart so stern in its mental pride, and his own kind feelings taught him the method of reaching hers. This keen desire to learn something of her secret history would have been surprising in a man of less comprehensive benevolence, and even in him there was a restless anxiety of manner but little in accordance with his usual quiet demeanor. His voice was like the breaking up of a fountain when he spoke again.

“Catharine,” he said.

She started at the name—her arms dropped—she looked wildly in his eyes:

“Oh! I mentioned the name,” she muttered, refolding her arms and drawing a deep breath.

“Catharine Montour, this hardihood is unreal; you are not thus unbelieving. Has the sweet trustfulness of your childhood departed forever? Have you no thought of those hours when the young heart is made up of faith and dependence—when prayer and helpless love break out from the soul, naturally as moisture exhales when the sun touches it? Nay,” he continued, with more powerful earnestness, as he saw her eyes waver and grow dim beneath the influence of his voice, “resist not the good spirit, which even now is hovering about your heart, as the ring-dove broods over its desolated nest. Hoarded thoughts of evil beget evil. Open your heart to confidence and counsel. Confide in one who never yet betrayed trust—one who is no stranger to sorrow, and who is too frail himself to lack charity for the sins of others. I beseech you to tell me, are you not of English birth?”

Tears, large and mournful tears, stood in Catharine Montour’s eyes. She was once more subdued and humble as an infant. A golden chord had been touched in her memory, and every heart-string vibrated to the music of other years. She sat down and opened her history to that strange man abruptly, and as one under the influence of a dream.

“Yes, I was born in England,” she said; “born in a place so beautiful that any human being might be happy from the mere influence of its verdant and tranquil quietness. No traveller ever passed through that village without stopping to admire its verdant and secluded tranquillity. Back from the church stood the parsonage, an irregular old building, surrounded by a grove of magnificent oaks, through which its pointed roof and tall chimneys alone could be seen from the village. A tribe of rooks dwelt in the oaks, and a whole bevy of wrens came and built their nests in the vines. With my earliest recollection comes the soft chirp of the nestlings under my window, and the carolling song which broke up from the larks when they left the long grass in the graveyard, where they nested during the summer nights.

“My father was rector of the parish, the younger son of a noble family. He had a small, independent fortune, which allowed him to distribute the income from his living among the poor of the village. My mother was a gentle creature, of refined and delicate, but not comprehensive, mind. She loved my father, and next to him, or rather as a portion of himself, me. As a child, I was passionate and wayward, but warm of heart, forgiving and generous. My spirit brooked no control; but my indulgent father and sweet mother could see nothing more dangerous than a quick intellect and over-abundant healthfulness in the capricious tyranny of my disposition. I was passionately fond of my mother, and when she sometimes stole to my bedside and hushed me to sleep with her soft kisses and pleasant voice I would promise in my innermost heart never to grieve her again; yet the next day I experienced a kind of pleasure in bringing the tears to her gentle eyes by some wayward expression of obstinacy or dislike.”

CHAPTER VII
MY FATHER’S WARD

“When I was fifteen, an old college associate died and left my father guardian to his son and heir. This young gentleman’s arrival at the parsonage was an epoch in my life. A timid and feminine anxiety to please took possession of my heart. I gave up for his use my own little sitting-room, opening upon a wilderness of roses and tangled honeysuckles that had once been a garden, but which I had delighted to see run wild in unchecked luxuriance, till it had become as fragrant and rife with blossoms as an East India jungle.

“It was the first act of self-denial I had ever submitted to, and I found a pleasure in it which more than compensated for the pain I felt in removing my music and books, with the easel which I had taken such pains to place in its proper light, to a small chamber above.

“Heedless of my mother’s entreaty, that I would remain quiet and receive our guest in due form, I sprang out upon the balcony, and winding my arm around one of its pillars, pushed back the clustering passionflowers, and bent eagerly over, to obtain a perfect view of our visitor. He was a slight, aristocratic youth, with an air of thoughtful manliness beyond his years. He was speaking as he advanced up the serpentine walk which led to the balcony, and seemed to be making some observation on the wild beauty of the garden. There was something in the tones of his voice, a quiet dignity in his manner, that awed me. I shrunk back into the room, where my mother was sitting, and placed myself by her side. My cheek burned and my heart beat rapidly when he entered. But my confusion passed unnoticed, or, if remarked, was attributed to the bashfulness of extreme youth. Varnham was my senior by four years, and he evidently considered me as a child, for after a courteous bow on my introduction he turned to my mother and began to speak of the village and its remarkable quietude. I returned to my room that night out of humor with myself, and somewhat in awe of our guest.

“The history of the next two years would be one of the heart alone—a narrative of unfolding intellect and feeling. It was impossible that two persons, however dissimilar in taste and disposition, should be long domesticated in the same dwelling without gradually assimilating in some degree. Perhaps two beings more decidedly unlike never met than Varnham and myself, but after the first restraint which followed our introduction wore off he became to me a preceptor and most valuable friend.

“Two years brought Varnham to his majority. His fortune, though limited, was equal to his wants; he resolved to travel, and then take orders, for he had been intended for the church. It was a sorrowful day to us when he left the parsonage. The lonely feelings which followed his departure never gave place to cheerfulness again. In four weeks from that day my father was laid in the vault of his own loved church. My gentle mother neither wept nor moaned when she saw the beloved of her youth laid beside the gorgeous coffins of his lordly ancestors. But in three weeks after, I was alone in the wide world; for she was dead also.

“Two weary, sad nights I sat beside that beautiful corpse, still and tearless, in a waking dream. I remember that kind voices were around me, and that more than once pitying faces bent over me, and strove to persuade me away from my melancholy vigils. But I neither answered nor moved; they sighed as they spoke, and passed in and out, like the actors of a tragedy in which I had no part. I was stupefied by the first great trouble of my life!

“Then the passion of grief burst over me. I fell to the floor, and my very life seemed ebbing away in tears and lamentations. Hour after hour passed by, and I remained as I had fallen, in an agony of sorrow. I know not how it was, but towards morning I sunk into a heavy slumber.

“When I again returned to consciousness Varnham was sitting beside my bed; physicians and attendants were gliding softly about the room, and everything was hushed as death around me. I was very tired and weak; but I remembered that my mother was dead, and that I had fainted; I whispered a request to see her once more—she had been buried three weeks.

“Varnham had heard of my father’s death in Paris, and hastened home, to find me an orphan doubly bereaved, to become my nurse and my counsellor—my all. Most tenderly did he watch over me during my hours of convalescence. And I returned his love with a gratitude as fervent as ever warmed the heart of woman.

“I knew nothing of business, scarcely that money was necessary to secure the elegances I enjoyed. I had not even dreamed of a change of residence, and when information reached us that a rector had been appointed to supply my father’s place, and that Lord Granby, the elder brother of my lamented parent, had consented to receive me as an inmate of his own house I sunk beneath the blow as if a second and terrible misfortune had befallen me.

“The thought of being dragged from my home—from the sweet haunts which contained the precious remembrances of my parents—and conveyed to the cold, lordly halls of my aristocratic uncle nearly flung me back to a state of delirium.

“There was but one being on earth to whom I could turn for protection, and to him my heart appealed with the trust and tender confidence of a sister. I pleaded with him to intercede with my uncle, that I might be permitted still to reside at the parsonage—that I might not be taken from all my love could ever cling to. Varnham spoke kindly and gently to me; he explained the impropriety, if not the impossibility of Lord Granby’s granting my desire, and besought me to be resigned to a fate which many in my forlorn orphanage might justly covet. He spoke of the gaieties and distinction which my residence with Lord Granby would open to me, and used every argument to reconcile me to my destiny. But my heart clung tenaciously to its old idols, and refused to be comforted.

“It was deep in the morning—my uncle’s coroneted chariot was drawn up before my quiet home. The sun flashed brightly over the richly studded harness of four superb horses, which tossed their heads and pawed the earth impatient for the road. A footman in livery lounged upon the doorsteps, and the supercilious coachman stood beside his horses, dangling his silken reins, now and then casting an expectant look into the hall-door.

“It was natural that he should be impatient, for they had been kept waiting more than an hour. I thought that I had nerved myself to depart; but when I descended from my chamber, and saw that gorgeous carriage, with its silken cushions and gilded panels, ready to convey me to the hospitality of one who was almost a stranger, my heart died within me. I turned into the little room where I had spent that night of sorrow by my mother’s corpse; I flung myself on the sofa, and burying my face in the pillows sobbed aloud in the wretchedness of a heart about to be sundered from all it had ever loved. Varnham was standing over me, pale and agitated. He strove to comfort me—was prodigal in words of soothing and endearment, and at length of passionate supplication. I was led to the carriage his affianced wife.

“My year of mourning was indeed one of sorrow and loneliness of heart; I was a stranger in the home of my ancestors, and looked forward to the period of my marriage with an impatience that would have satisfied the most exacting love. It was a cheap mode of obliging the orphan niece, and Lord Granby presented the living which had been my father’s to Varnham, who had taken orders, and was ready to convey me back a bride to my old home.

“Had my relative lavished his whole fortune on me I should not have been more grateful! My capacities for enjoyment were chilled by the cold, formal dullness of his dwelling. I panted for the dear solitude of my old haunts, as the prisoned bird pines for his home in the green leaves. We were married before the altar where my father had prayed, and where I had received the sacrament of baptism. The register which recorded my birth bore witness to my union with Varnham, the only true friend my solitary destiny had left to me. We entered our old home, rich in gentle affections and holy memories. I was content with the pleasant vistas of life that opened to us.

“Our united fortunes were sufficient for our wants. We determined to live a life of seclusion, study, and well-performed duties, such as had made the happiness of my parents. Filled with these innocent hopes I took possession of my old home, a cheerful and contented wife. We saw but little company, but my household duties, my music, painting, and needlework gave me constant and cheerful occupation, and three years of almost thorough contentment passed by without bringing a wish beyond my own household. At this time a daughter was born to us, and in the fulness of my content I forgot to ask if there was a degree of happiness which I had never tasted.

“The fourth year after my marriage another coffin was placed in the family vault beside my parents—that of James, Earl of Granby. My cousin, Georgiana, scarcely outlived the period of her mourning; and, at the age of twenty-two, I, who had never dreamed of worldly aggrandizement, suddenly found myself a peeress in my own right, and possessor of one of the finest estates in England, for the Granby honors descended alike to male and female heirs, and I was the last of our race.

“At first I was bewildered by the suddenness of my exaltation; then, as if one burst of sunshine were only necessary to ripen the dormant ambition of my heart, a change came over my whole being. A new and brilliant career was opened to me; visions of power, greatness, and excitement floated through my imagination. The pleasant contentment of my life was broken up forever.

“Varnham took no share in my restless delight; his nature was quiet and contemplative—his taste refined and essentially domestic. What happiness could he look for in the brilliant destiny prepared for us? From that time there was a shadow as of evil foreboding in his eye, and his manner became constrained and regretful. Perhaps with his better knowledge of the world he trembled to find me so near that vortex of artificial life into which I was eager to plunge myself.

“He made no opposition to my hasty plans—nay, admitted the necessity of a change in our mode of living; but that anxious expression never for a moment left his eyes. He seemed rather a victim than a partaker in my promised greatness. From that time our pursuits took different directions. I had thoughts and feelings with which he had no sympathy. When an estrangement of the mind commences, that of the heart soon follows.

“Again that splendid carriage stood before our home, ready to convey us to the pillared halls of my inheritance. There were few, and those few transient, regrets in my heart when, with a haughty consciousness of power and station, I sunk to the cushioned seat, swept proudly around that old church, and away from the sweet leafy bower in which I had known so much happiness.

“Everything rich and beautiful had been lavished by my predecessor in the adornment of Ashton. Paintings of priceless worth lined its galleries, and sculptured marble started up at every turn to charm me with the pure and classic loveliness of statuary. Tables of rare mosaic—ancient tapestry and articles of virtu gathered from all quarters of the globe were collected there; my taste for the arts—my love of the beautiful—made it almost a paradise, and it was long before I wearied of the almost regal magnificence which surrounded me. But after a time these things became familiar; excitement gradually wore away, and my now reckless spirit panted for change—for deeper draughts from the sparkling cup which I had found so pleasant in tasting.

“As the season advanced I proposed going up to London; Varnham consented, but reluctantly; I saw this almost without notice; the time had passed when his wishes predominated over mine.

“I am certain that Varnham doubted my strength to resist the temptations of a season in town. It was a groundless fear; there was nothing in the heartless supercilious people of fashion whom I met to captivate a heart like mine. I was young, beautiful, new, and soon became the fashion—the envy of women, and the worshipped idol of men. I was not for a moment deluded by the homage lavished upon me. I received the worship, but in my heart despised the worshippers.

“Varnham did not entirely relinquish his rectorship, but gave its emoluments to the curate who performed the duties, reserving the house which we both loved, to ourselves. He went down to the old place occasionally, and though I never accompanied him, it was pleasant to know that the haunts of my early love were still kept sacred. When the season broke up I invited a party to Ashton, but Varnham persuaded me to spend the month which would intervene before its arrival, at the parsonage. I was weary with the rush and bustle of my town life, and willingly consented to his plan.

“Our house was shut up, the servants went down to Ashton, and Varnham, one friend and myself settled quietly in our own former home. The repose of that beautiful valley had something heavenly in it, after the turmoil of London. Old associations came up to soften the heart, and I was happier than I had been since coming in possession of my inheritance.

“The friend whom Varnham invited to share the quiet of the parsonage with us had made himself conspicuous as a young man of great talent in the lower house; yet I knew less of him than of almost any distinguished person in society. We had met often in the whirl of town life, but a few passing words and cold compliments alone marked our intercourse. There was something of reserve and stiffness in his manner, by no means flattering to my self-love, and I was rather prejudiced against him than otherwise from his extreme popularity.

“There was something in my nature which refused to glide tamely down the current of other peopled opinions, and the sudden rise of young Murray with his political party, the adulation lavished upon him by the lion-loving women of fashion only served to excite my contempt for them, and to make me withhold from him the high opinion justly earned by talents of no ordinary character.

“When he took his seat in our travelling carriage, it was with his usual cold and almost uncourteous manner; but by degrees all restraint wore off, his conversational powers were excited, and I found myself listening with a degree of admiration seldom aroused in my bosom to his brilliant offhand eloquence. Varnham seemed pleased that my former unreasonable prejudices were yielding to the charm of his friend’s genius—and our ride was one of the most agreeable of my then pleasant life.

“It was not till after we had been at the parsonage several days that the speeches which had so suddenly lifted our guest into notice came under my observation. I was astonished at their depth and soundness. There was depth and brilliancy, flashes of rich, strong poetry mingled with the argument—a vivid, quick eloquence in the style that stirred my heart like martial music. By degrees the great wealth of Murray’s intellect, the manly strength and tenderness of his nature, revealed themselves. His character was a grand one; I could look up to that man with my whole being, and grow prouder from the homage.

“A love of intellectual greatness, a worship of mind, had ever been a leading trait in my character. In that man I found more than mind. He was strong in principle, rich in feeling—deep, earnest feeling—which a great soul might battle against if duty commanded, and restrain, but never wholly conquer.

“We had mistaken each other, and there lay the danger. I had believed him cold and ambitious. He had looked upon Lady Granby as a frivolous, selfish woman, who would be forever quaffing the foam of life, but never reach the pure wine; one with whom it was hardly worth while to become acquainted.

“A few days in the old parsonage house sufficed to enlighten us both. There I was natural, gentle, loving—glad to get among innocent things again. In those little rooms I forgot everything but the pleasure of being at home. Weeks passed before I knew why that home had been turned into a paradise to which all previous memories were as nothing.

“I think he recognized the evil that was creeping over us first, for he began to avoid me, and for a time, though in the same house, we scarcely spoke together. But he loved me, spite of his struggles, his sensitive honor, his iron resolves; he loved me, his friend’s wife, but he was strong and honorable. The mighty spirit which had taken possession of his heart unawares could not all at once be driven forth, but it had no power to overcome his integrity. He was too brave and loyal for domestic treason.

“This nobility of character was enough to chain my soul to his forever. I did not attempt to deceive myself; well I knew that the sweet but terrible power growing up in my life was a sin to be atoned for with years of suffering, for souls like ours must avenge themselves for the wrong feelings more certainly than ordinary natures find retribution for evil deeds.

“When the first knowledge came upon me that I loved my husband’s friend it overwhelmed me with consternation. The danger of a thing like this had never entered my thoughts—my heart had been asleep—its awaking frightened me. Mine was not a mad passion that defies human laws and moral ties, or that deceives itself with sophistry. Never for a moment did I attempt to justify or excuse it. I knew that such love would have changed my whole being to gentleness, holiness, humility, anything bright and good, had freedom made it innocent; but I never once thought of breaking the ties that bound me. If I was a slave, my own will had riveted the chains upon my wrist; I was not one to tear them off because the iron began to gall me.

“No, no; the love that I bore him was deep and fervent, but not weak. It might kill, but never degrade me. I believed it then; I am certain of it now. I have trampled on my heart. It has been crushed, broken, thrust aside—but the love of that man lives there yet. I struggled against it—tortured my heart into madness—fled with this clinging love into the depths of the wilderness—to the wilderness, but it lives here yet—it lives here yet.”

Catharine Montour pressed one hand upon her heart as she spoke; her face was pallid with an expression of unutterable pain. Her eyes seemed to plead with the missionary for pity.

He answered that appeal with looks of sorrowful compassion.

“There was confidence between us at last; each knew that the other suffered, and that the other loved.

“I have said that Murray was an honorable man, but his love was a tyrant, or it would never have been expressed. He was no tempter, nor was I one to be tempted. It was in his goodness that our strength lay, for we were strong, and in every act of our lives faithful to the duties that chained us.

“Murray seized upon this passion with his grasping intellect, and strove to force it into friendship, or into that deceptive, Platonic sentiment which is neither friendship nor love. My heart followed him—my mind kept pace with his—anything that did not separate us, and which was not degradation, I was strong enough to endure. We could not give up each other’s society; that we did not attempt, for both felt its impossibility.”

CHAPTER VIII
STRUGGLES AND PENALTIES

“Varnham was absent when our confession was first looked, then breathed, and at last desperately uttered. He had been gone more than a week, making preparations for our return to Ashton. Had every action of our lives been counted during that time, the most austere moralist could have detected no wrong. The sin with us was too subtle and deep for human eyes, even for our own. We could not believe that feelings which had no evil wish might be in themselves evil. But when my husband returned, the pang of shame and regret that fell upon us should have been proof enough of wrong. When had we ever blushed and trembled in his presence before?

“We were alone, Murray and myself, in the little boudoir which I have mentioned so often. He was sitting on the sofa, to which my husband had so tenderly lifted me on the night before my mother’s funeral, reading one of my favorite Italian poets. I sat a little way off, listening to the deep melody of his voice, watching the alternate fire and shadow that played within the depths of his large eyes, the clear, bold expression of his forehead, and the smile upon his lips, which seemed imbued with the soft poetry that dropped in melody from them.

“I had forgotten everything for the time, and was lost in the first bewildering dream which follows, with its delicious quietude, the entire outpouring of the soul; when thought itself arises but as sweet exhalation from the one grand passion which pervades the whole being; when even a sense of wrong but haunts the heart as the bee slumbers within the urn of a flower, rendered inert and stingless by the wealth of honey which surrounds it.

“Murray had been bred in society, and could not so readily fling off the consciousness of our position. A shadow, darker than the words of his author warranted, settled on his brow as he read, and more than once he raised his eyes from the page in the middle of a sentence, and fixed them with a serious and almost melancholy earnestness on my face. Then I would interrupt his thoughts with some of the pleasant words which love sends up from the full heart, naturally as song gushes from the bosom of a nightingale. He would muse a moment after this and resume his book, allowing his voice to revel in the melody of the language, then hurry on with a stern and abrupt emphasis, as one who strives by rapidity of utterance to conquer painful thoughts.

“The sudden recoil of my heart was suffocating, then its deep, heavy throbbing grew almost audible. I felt the blood ebbing away from my face and a faintness was upon me. Murray started and grasped my hand with a violence that pained me.

“‘Lady Granby, be yourself; why do you tremble? Have we in wish or act wronged this man?’

“‘No—no; the angels of Heaven must bear us witness—but I have a secret here; and oh, God! forgive me; I am not glad to see him.’

“‘And I,’ he said, turning pale, ‘am I the cause of this terror?—indeed, lady, it is better that we part now—this weakness——’

“The very thought of his departure drove me wild. ‘I am not weak—nor wicked either,’ I said, with a proud smile; ‘see if I prove so?’

“Then wringing my hand from his grasp I deliberately opened the sash-door and went out to meet my husband. He was already upon the balcony, and sprang forward to greet me with more eager affection than I had ever witnessed in him before. During one moment I was drawn to his bosom unresistingly. I was faint with agitation. He must have felt me tremble, but evidently imputed the emotion to joy at his sudden return; with his arms about my waist he drew me into the room. Oh! how thoroughly I loathed the hypocrisy which one forbidden feeling had imposed on the future! Murray nerved himself for the interview, and stood up, pale and collected, to receive his late friend. When he saw my position, a faint flush shot over his forehead, but his forced composure was in nothing else disturbed.

“I put away my husband’s arm and sunk to a seat, overwhelmed with a painful consciousness of the moral degradation I had heaped upon myself.

“Murray went up to London on the next day; a few brief words of farewell were all that could be granted me. I went away by myself and wept bitterly.

“The society of my husband grew wearisome, and yet I said again and again to myself: ‘We have done him no wrong; this love which fills my heart never was his—never existed before; it is pure and honorable.’ As I said this, my cheek burned with the falsehood. Was not deception itself a sin? Oh! how many painful apprehensions haunted my imagination. For two days I was tormented by shadowy evils. My mornings were full of inquietude, and my sleep was not rest. Then came his first letter, so considerate and gentle, so full of manly solicitude for my peace of mind. I flung aside all doubt and self-distrust. Happiness sprung back to my heart like a glad infant to its mother’s bosom. The earth seemed bursting into blossom around me. Again I surrendered my spirit to its first sweet dream of contentment, and strove to convince myself that feelings were harmless till they sprang into evil actions. When my intellect refused this sophistry I resolutely cast all thought aside.

“Murray joined us at Ashton. Among the guests who spent Christmas with us was a young lady of refined and pleasant manners, the orphan of a noble family, whose entailed property had fallen to a distant heir on the death of her father. Thus she was left almost penniless, dependent on a wealthy aunt, who seemed anxious to get rid of her trust with as little expense as possible.

“My sympathy was excited in the young lady’s behalf, for her coarse relative supplied her but sparingly with the means of supporting her station in society, and in her vulgar eagerness to have the poor girl settled and off her hands was continually compromising her delicacy and wounding her pride.

“Louisa was reserved, and somewhat cold in her disposition, but my feelings had been enlisted in her behalf, and I contrived every little stratagem in my power to supply her want of wealth and to shield her from the match-making schemes of her aunt.

“Being much in my society, she was thrown into constant companionship with Murray. He did not at first seem interested in her, for she was retiring and not really beautiful, but by degrees the gentle sweetness of her character won its way to his heart, and he seemed pleased with her society, but there was nothing in the intimacy to alarm me. I was rather gratified than otherwise that he should be interested in my protégée.

“When we again took up our residence in town I occasionally acted as chaperon to Miss Jameson, but as my hope centered more trustfully around one object, my taste for general society diminished, and I surrounded myself with a small circle of distinguished individuals, and mingled but little in the dissipations of the world, where her aunt was continually forcing her to exhibit herself. I was still interested in her, but the repulsive coarseness of her relative prevented a thorough renewal of the intimacy which had existed while she was yet my guest.

“A year passed by, in which had been crowded a whole life of mingled happiness and misery, a dreamy tumultuous year that had been one long struggle to preserve the love which had become a portion of my soul, and to maintain that integrity of thought and deed, without which life would be valueless.

“The blow fell at length; Murray was about to be married. He did not allow me to be tortured by public rumor, but came and told me with his own lips.

“I had been very sad all the morning, and when I heard his familiar knock at the street-door, and the footsteps to which my heart had never yet failed to thrill approaching my boudoir, a dark presentiment fell upon me, and I trembled as if a death-watch was sounding in my ears. But I had learned to conceal my feelings, and sat quietly in my cushioned chair, occupied with a piece of fine needlework when he entered.

“He was deeply agitated, and his hand shook violently when I arose to receive him. Mine was steady. I was not about to heap misery on the heart that had clung to me. He spoke of those days at the parsonage; of the dreams, those impossible dreams, out of which we were to win happiness, innocent happiness to ourselves—a happiness that should wrong no one, and yet fill our whole lives. He spoke of it all as a dream—a sad, mocking delusion, which was like feeding the soul on husks. It was in vain, he said, to deceive ourselves longer; the love which had existed—he did not say still existed—between us must inevitably perish under the restraints which honor and conscience imposed. We were sure of nothing, not even of those brief moments of social intercourse which society allows to those who have no secret feelings to conceal.

“I neither expostulated nor reasoned, but with a calmness which startled myself I inquired the name of my rival.

“It was Louisa Jameson, the creature whom I had cherished even as a sister. No matter; I had nerved myself to bear all. If my heart trembled, no emotions stirred my face. He had not yet proposed, but he knew that she loved him, and her position was one to excite his compassion. Still he would not propose unless I consented. He had come to throw himself on my generosity.

“I did consent. Measuredly and coldly the words were spoken, but they did not satisfy him. He would have me feel willing—his happiness should not be secured at the expense of mine, if from my whole heart I could not resign him. No advantage should be taken of a freedom rendered only from the lips.

“For three whole hours I remained numb and still. At last my maid came to remind me of a ball and supper to which I was engaged.

“I arose and bade her array me in my gayest apparel. Never do I remember myself so beautiful as on that night. There was fever in my cheek, the fire of a tortured spirit—a wild, sparkling wit flashed from my lips, and among the gay and the lovely I was most gay and most recklessly brilliant.

“Murray called in the morning, for we were to be friends still. I had suffered much during the night, but I put rouge on my pallid cheeks, and with forced cheerfulness went down to receive him. He appeared ill at ease. Perhaps he feared reproaches after I recovered from the first effect of his desertion, but the anguish it had wrought was too deep for tears or weak complaints; when the death-blow comes, we cease to struggle.

“I ascertained that Miss Jameson’s aunt had refused to bestow a fortune with her niece, and I knew that Murray was far, far from wealthy enough to meet the expenses of an establishment befitting his rank. I could not bear that his fine mind should be cramped by the petty annoyances of a limited income, nor his wife forever crushed beneath the humiliating consciousness of poverty. Varnham never allowed himself to exceed his own little income, and the revenues of the Granby estates far exceeded our general expenditure. It was, therefore, easy for me to raise a sum sufficient to endow my rival, and thus indirectly secure a competence to him.

“I gave orders to my agent that twenty thousand pounds should be immediately raised for me. When the sum was secured I went privately to the house of my rival, and, with little persuasion, induced her parsimonious relative to present it to Miss Jameson as the gift of her own generosity. I knew that my secret was safe, for she was a worldly woman and was not likely to deprive herself of the éclat of a generous deed by exposing my share in it.

“Then I thought of Varnham for the first time in many days, not as the husband I had been estranged from, but as the kind, good friend who had watched beside me, and loved me amid all my sorrows. I was not wholly in my right mind, and reflected imperfectly on the step that I was about to take. Mr. Varnham was at Ashton, and I resolved to go to him, but with no definite aim, for I was incapable of any fixed plan. But he was my only friend, and my poor heart turned back to him in its emergency of sorrow with the trust of former years. I forgot that it had locked up the only well-spring of sympathy left to it by the very course of its anguish.

“I flung a large cloak over my splendid attire, and while my carriage was yet at the door entered it and ordered them to proceed to Ashton. We travelled all day; I did not once leave my seat, but remained muffled in my cloak, with the hood drawn over my head, lost in the misty half-consciousness of partial insanity. I believe that the carriage stopped more than once, that food and rest were urged on me by my servants, but I took no heed, only ordering them to drive forward, for the rapid motion relieved me.

“It was deep in the night when we reached Ashton. Everything was dark and gloomy; but one steady lamp glimmered from the library window, and I knew that Varnham was up, and there. The library was in the back part of the house, and the sound of the carriage had not reached it.

“I made my way through the darkened hall and entered my husband’s presence. For one moment the feverish beating of my heart was hushed by the holy tranquillity of that solitary student. There was something appalling in the sombre, gloomy magnificence of the room in which he sat. The noble, painted window seemed thick and impervious in the dim light. The rich bookcases were in shadow, and cold marble statues looked down from their pedestals with a pale, grave-like beauty as I entered.

“Varnham was reading. One small lamp alone shed its lustre on the rare Mosaic table over which he bent, and threw a broad light across the pale, calm forehead which had something heavenly in its tranquil smoothness. I was by his side, and yet he did not see me. The solemn stillness of the room had cleared away my brain, and for a moment I felt the madness of my intended confidence. I staggered, and should have fallen but for the edge of the table, which I grasped with a force that made the lamp tremble.

“Varnham started up astonished at my sudden presence; but when he saw me standing before him, with the fire of excitement burning in my eyes and crimsoning my cheeks, with jewels twinkling in my hair and blazing on my girdle, where it flashed out from the cloak which my trembling hand had become powerless to hold, he seemed intuitively to feel the evil destiny that I had wrought for myself. His face became pale, and it was a minute before he could speak. Then he came forward, drew me kindly to his bosom and kissed my forehead with a tenderness that went to my heart like the hushing of my mother’s voice. I flung myself upon his bosom and wept with a burst of passionate grief. He seated himself, drew me closer to his heart, and besought me to tell him the cause of my sorrow.

“I did tell him—and then he put me from his bosom as if I had been a leper, with a cry of rage, bitter rage on the lips that had never till then known aught but blessings; not against me—no, he could never have denounced me—but on Murray. Then I bethought me of the evil that might follow. I arose from the floor and fell before him, where he stood, and tried to plead and to call back all I had said. He lifted me again in his arms, though I felt a tremor run through his whole frame as he did so; he told me to be comforted, said many soothing words, and promised never to reproach me again, but he said nothing of him, and when I again strove to plead in his defence he put me sternly away. Then I went wholly mad.

“I can never describe the cold, hopeless struggle of my heart to retain the delusions which haunted my insane moments when my intellect began to resume its functions. It seemed as if some cruel spirit were gradually tightening the bonds of earth about me, and ruthlessly dragging me back to reason, while my spirit clung with intense longing to its own wild ideal.

“It was a sad, sad night to me when that star arose in the sky and sent its pure beams down to the bosom of my acacia, and I knew that the clear orb would henceforth be to me only a star—that the realms which I had located in its distant bosom were but the dream of a diseased fancy that would return no more with its beautiful and vivid faith which had no power to reason or doubt.

“But we can force the fantasies of a mind no more than the affections of the heart. My disease left me; then the passions and aspirations of my old nature started up, one after another, like marble statues over which a midnight blackness had fallen. And there in the midst, more firmly established than ever, his image remained—his name, his being, and the sad history of my own sufferings had, for one whole year, been to me but as an indefinite and painful dream. But sorrow and insanity itself had failed to uproot the love which had led to such misery. Can I be blamed that I prayed for insensibility again?”

CHAPTER IX
THE LOST YEAR

“Varnham had watched me for one year as a mother guards her wayward child. But the sudden illness of a near relative forced him from his guardianship. In my wildest moments I had always been gentle and submissive, but I was told that he left me with much reluctance to the care of my own maid, the housekeeper, and my medical attendant. They loved me, and he knew that with them I should be safe. When I began to question them of what had passed during my confinement, they appeared surprised by the quietness and regularity of my speech, but were ready to convince themselves that it was only one of the fitful appearances of insanity which had often deceived them during my illness. They, however, answered me frankly and with the respect which Varnham had ever enjoined upon them, even when he supposed that I could neither understand nor resent indignity.

“They told me that on the night of my arrival at Ashton they were all summoned from their beds by a violent ringing of the library bell; when they entered, my husband was forcibly holding me in his arms, though he was deadly pale and trembling so violently that the effort seemed too much for his strength. At first they dared not attempt to assist him; there was something so terrible in my shrieks and wild efforts to free myself that they were appalled. It was not till I had exhausted my strength, and lay breathless and faintly struggling on his bosom that they ventured to approach.

“I must have been a fearful sight, as they described me, with the white foam swelling to my lips, my face flushed, my eyes vivid with fever, and both hands clenched wildly in the long hair which fell over my husband’s arms and bosom, matted with the jewels which I had worn at Murray’s wedding. At every fresh effort I made to extricate myself, some of these gems broke loose, flashed to the floor and were trampled beneath the feet of my servants, for everything was unheeded in the panic which my sudden frenzy had created.

“‘Oh! it was an awful scene!’ exclaimed the old housekeeper, breaking off her description and removing the glasses from her tearful eyes as she spoke. ‘I was frightened when I looked at you, but when my master lifted his face, and the light lay full upon it, my heart swelled, and I began to cry like a child. There was something in his look—I cannot tell what it was—something that made me hold my breath with awe, yet sent the tears to my eyes. I forgot you when I looked at him.

“‘We carried you away to this chamber and when we laid you on the bed you laughed and sung in a wild, shrill voice that made the blood grow cold in my veins. I have never heard a sound so painful and thrilling as your cries were that night. For many hours you raved about some terrible deed that was to be done, and wildly begged that there might be no murder. Then you would start up and extend your arms in a pleading, earnest way to my master, and would entreat him with wild and touching eloquence to let you die—to imprison you in some cold, drear place where you would never see him again, but not to wound you so cruelly with his eyes.

“‘I knew that all this was but the effect of a brain fever—that there could be no meaning in your words. Yet it seemed to me that my master should have striven to tranquillize you more than he did. Had he promised all you required, it might have had a soothing influence; for you were strangely anxious that he should give a pledge not to hate or even condemn some person who was not named. Yet, though you would at moments plead for mercy and protection with a piteous helplessness that might have won the heart of an enemy to compassion, he stood over you unchanged in that look of stern sorrow which had struck me so forcibly in the library. He scarcely seemed to comprehend the wild pathos of your words, but his composure was stern and painful to look upon.

“‘At last you appeared to become more quiet, but still kept your eyes fixed pleadingly on his face and a wild, sweet strain breathed from your lips with a rise and fall so sad and plaintive that it seemed as if half your voice must have dissolved to tears and a broken heart was flowing away in its own low melody.

“‘While the music yet lingered about your lips you began to talk of your mother, of a stone church where she had first taught you to pray—of a coffin, and a large white rose-tree that grew beneath a window which you had loved because her dear hand had planted it; then you besought him to bring some of those roses—white and pure, you said—that they might be laid upon your heart and take the fever away; then none need be ashamed to weep when you died, and perhaps they might bury you beside your mother.

“‘It was enough to break one’s heart to hear you plead in that sad, earnest way, and I saw, through the tears which almost blinded me, that my master was losing his self-command. The veins began to swell on his forehead, and a tremulous motion became visible about his mouth, which had till then remained as firm and almost as white as marble. He made a movement as if about to go away; but just then you raised your arms and, winding them about his neck, said: “Nay, Varnham, you will not leave me to die here. Let us go to our own old home. I will be very quiet, and will not try to live—only promise me this: bury me beneath the balcony, and let that lone, white rose-tree blossom over me forever and ever. I cannot exactly tell why, but they will not let me rest beside my mother, so my spirit shall stay among those pure flowers in patient bondage till all shall proclaim it purified and stainless enough to go and dwell with her. Kiss me once more, and say that you will go.”

“‘My master could but feebly resist the effort with which his face was drawn to yours; but when your lips met his he began to tremble again, and strove to unwind your arms from his neck; but you laid your head on his bosom, and that low, sad melody again broke from your lips, and your arms still wound more clingingly about him at every effort to undo their clasp.

“‘He looked down upon the face that would not be removed from its rest; his bosom heaved, he wound his arms convulsively about your form for a moment, then forced you back to the pillow, and fell upon his knees by the bedside. His face was buried in the counterpane, but the sound of his half-stifled sobs grew audible throughout the room, and the bed shook beneath the violent trembling of his form. I beckoned the maid, and we stole from his presence, for it seemed wrong to stand by and gaze upon such grief.

“‘When we returned you were silent and apparently asleep. He was sitting by the bed, and his eyes were fixed on your face with the same mournful, forgiving look with which I have seen him regard you a thousand times since. He spoke in his usual gentle way, and told us to tread lightly, that we might not disturb you. It was many hours before you awoke. My master was concealed by the drapery; you started up with a wild cry, and asked if he had gone to do murder. He caught you in his arms as you were about to spring from the bed, and with gentle violence forced you back to the pillows again. Then he waved his hand for us to draw back, and spoke to you in a solemn and impressive voice; but the last words only reached me. They were:

“‘“I have promised, solemnly promised, Caroline—try to comprehend me and be at rest.”

“‘Your fever raged many days after that, and you were constantly delirious, but never violent, and that frightful dread of some impending evil seemed to have left you entirely. Your disease at length abated, and the bloom gradually returned to your cheek, but every new mark of convalescence only seemed to deepen the melancholy which had settled on my master.

“‘When the physicians decided that your mind would never regain its former strength, but that it would ever remain wandering and gentle, and full of beautiful images as the fever had left it, my master became almost cheerful. He would allow no restraint to be placed upon you, and gave orders that you should be attended with all the respect and deference that had ever been rendered to your station. He never seemed more happy than while wandering with you about the gardens, and in the park; yet there were times when he would sit and gaze on your face as you slept, with a sad, regretful look that betrayed how truly he must have sorrowed over your misfortune. There was a yearning tenderness in his eye at such times, more touching far than tears. I could see that he struggled against these feelings, as if there existed something to be ashamed of in them, but they would return again.’

“All this and much more my good housekeeper said in answer to the questions which I put to her as my reason began to connect the present with the past. She did not hesitate to inform me of anything that I might wish to know, for she had no belief in my power to understand and connect her narrative. I had often questioned her before, and invariably forgot her answers as they fell from her lips; but every word of this conversation was graven on my memory, and if I have not repeated her exact language, the spirit and detail of her information is preserved.

“There was one subject that my housekeeper had not mentioned—my child. At first my intellect was too feeble for continued thought, and I did not notice this strange omission. Besides, some painful intuition kept me silent; the very thought of my own child was painful.

“At last I questioned her.

“‘Where,’ I said, ‘is my daughter? Surely, in my illness he has not kept her from me?’

“The old woman became deadly pale; she turned away, repulsing the subject with a gesture of her withered hands, which terrified me.

“‘My child!’ I said; ‘why are you silent? What have you done with her?’

“Still the old woman was speechless; but I could see tears stealing down her face.

“‘Bring her hither,’ I said, sick with apprehension; ‘I wish to see how much my daughter has grown.’

“The old woman flung herself at my feet. Her hands gathered up mine and held them fast.

“‘Do not ask—do not seek to remember. Oh! my lady, forget that you ever had a child!’

“‘Forget—and why? Who has dared to harm the child of my bosom, the heiress of my house?’

“She hid her face in my lap; she clung to my knees, moaning piteously.

“A vague remembrance seized upon me—that pale form shrouded in its golden hair—my heart was like ice. I bent down and whispered in the old woman’s ear:

“‘Who was it harmed my child?’

“She lifted her head with a wild outbreak of sorrow—my question almost drove her mad.

“‘Oh! lady, my master would let her come to your room—we were not to blame; you had always been so sweet-tempered and loving with her that we had no fear.’

“She stopped short, frightened by my looks. I whispered hoarsely:

“‘My child! my child!’

“That horrible pause was broken at last. She lifted her hands to heaven, the tears streamed down her face like rain.

“‘Do not ask—oh! my lady, I beseech you, do not ask.’

“‘My child—my child’

“I could feel the whispers lose themselves in my throat; but she understood them, and her own voice sunk so low that, had not my soul listened, the terrible truth could not have reached it.

“‘With your own hands you destroyed her—with your own hands you dashed her from the window!’

“Slowly from heart to limb the blood froze in my veins; for two days I lay in rigid silence, praying only for death. No, not even insanity would return. As yet I had only spent the holiday of my error. God would permit my brain to slumber no longer.

“I had but one wish—to escape that house, to flee from everything and everybody that had ever known me. It was no mad desire—no remnant of insanity. I reasoned coldly and well. Why not? utter hopelessness is wise.

“I dreaded but one thing on earth—the return of my husband. We never could be united again. He would not find the helpless being he had left, but a proud woman, whose heart if not her life had wronged him. He would not find the mother of his child, but its innocent, wretched murderer. I felt how bitter must be the news of my returning reason to the man who had forgiven the errors of my real character, because they had been so painfully lost in a visionary one, which disarmed resentment only from its very helplessness. I understood all Varnham’s generosity, all his extraordinary benevolence; but I knew also that he was a proud man, with an organization so exquisitely refined that the sins of an alienated affection would affect him more deeply than actual crime, with ordinary men. I felt that it was impossible for me ever to see him again.

“My plan for the future was soon formed. I resolved to leave England forever. My heart sickened when I thought of mingling in society, of meeting with people who might talk to me of things which would rend my heart continually with recollections of the past. The love which had been the great error of my life still held possession of my heart with a strength which would not be conquered. Could I go forth, then, into the world? Could I live in my own house, where everything was associated with recollections of that love—where every bush and flower would breathe a reproach to the heart which still worshipped on, when worship was double guilt and double shame? Could I look upon the spot where my child had perished, and live? No, I resolved to leave all, to break every tie which bound me to civilized man, and to fling myself into a new state of existence. I thought, and still think, that it was the only way by which I could secure any portion of tranquillity to my husband. It would be terrible for him to believe that I had died by my own hands, but much more terrible if he returned and, in place of the mindless being who had become so utterly helpless, so completely the object of his compassion, found the woman who had wronged him fully conscious of her fault, yet without the humility and penitence which should have followed his generous forgiveness. There was too much of the pride of my old nature left. I could not have lived in the same house with the man I had so injured.

“The Granby property was unentailed, with the exception of one small estate which went with the title. Immediately on coming into possession of the estates I had made a will, bequeathing the whole vast property to my child, and making my husband her trustee; but, in case of her death, all was to revert to him. He knew nothing of this; but the will was consigned to the hands of honorable men, and I was certain that it would be legally acted upon. In raising the sum which I devoted to Murray my agent had sold stocks to more than quadruple the amount. This amount had been paid to me, but in the excitement of my feelings I had neglected to place it with my banker and had left it in an escritoire at our town house, where was also deposited the most valuable portion of my jewels. I had no arrangements to make which could in any way reveal the course I had determined to pursue.

“There was one subject which I had not yet ventured to mention. My cheek burned and my heart beat quick when I at last brought myself to inquire about Murray. He was living a secluded life at a small cottage near Richmond. It was all I cared to learn.

“The second night after the conversation with my housekeeper I stole softly to the room of a sleeping housemaid and dressed myself in a suit of cast-off clothing which was not likely to be missed; then, with a few guineas which I found in my desk I went cautiously out, and left my house forever.

“Along the edge of the park ran a stream of small magnitude, but remarkable for its depth. On the brink of this stream I left a portion of the garments I had worn; then departed on foot for the nearest post-town, where I procured a passage to London. I found my house closed, but entered it with a private key and took from my escritoire the money and jewels which had been left there more than a year before.

“The third evening after leaving Ashton I stood in front of a beautiful cottage, separated from the thickly settled portions of Richmond by pleasure grounds, rather more spacious than is usual in that neighborhood, and still farther secluded by groups of ornamental trees. A light broke softly through the wreathing foliage which draped the windows of a lower room and I could distinguish the shadow of a man walking to and fro within.

“I knew that it was Murray, and that I should see him once more that night, yet my heart beat slow and regularly, without a throb to warn me of the deep feeling which still lived there in undying strength. I had no hope, and entire hopelessness is rest. I inquired for the housekeeper, and told her that I had been informed she wished to hire a housemaid; that I was without a place, and had come all the way from the city to secure one with her. I knew that she could not find it in her heart to send me back to London late at night and alone, and, as I anticipated, was invited to stay till morning.

“When the kind housekeeper was asleep I stole from her chamber and sought the apartment where I had seen the light. It was a small room, partly fitted up as a study, and partly as a parlor. Books and musical instruments lay scattered about; a few cabinet pictures hung upon the walls, and a portrait of Murray looked down upon me from over the mantelpiece as I entered. A lamp was still burning, and an open work-box seemed to have been pushed from its station on the table, directly beneath it, to make room for a small book of closely filled manuscript which lay open, as if it had just been written in. A pen lay by, and the ink was yet damp on the unfinished page. Even across the room I knew the handwriting; the impulse to read which seized upon me was unconquerable. I held my breath, for the stillness around was like a hush of a tomb, and the characters seemed to start up like living witnesses beneath my eyes as I bent over the book. Thus the page ran:

“‘They tell me she is mad—that her fine mind is broken, and her warm heart unstrung forever. They say this, and comment and speculate upon causes in my presence, as if I could not feel. I sit with apparent calmness, and listen to things which would break a common heart.

“‘The soft smile of my wife is ever upon me, the cheek of my boy dimples beneath my glance if I but raise my eyes to his innocent face, and yet there are times when I cannot look upon them. The image of that noble and ruined being is forever starting up between me and them. I did not intend this when I took upon myself the right to regulate the destiny of a fellow-being—madness—no, no, I never thought of that! I did not dream that my own nature—but why should I write this? Yet I cannot keep these feelings forever pent up in my heart.

“‘It was terrible news! Why did that officious physician come here to tell me there was no hope, and this day above all others in the year? Was it any reason that he should wound me with this news, because I was known to be a friend of the family—a friend truly? How coldly the man told me that she could never recover her reason! It was like the slow stab of a poignard; my heart quivered under it. Just then my wife must come with her innocent and loving voice to give me the good-night kiss before she left me. Poor thing! she little dreamed of the melancholy tidings which caused me to return her caress so coldly. I will try and seek rest, but not with them; sometimes I wish that I might never see them again. I must be alone to-night!’

“It was but the fulfillment of my own prophecy. I knew that he could not be happy; that he never would be again; never even tranquil till he believed me in my grave. My resolution was more firmly established, I would not live a continual cause of torment to him. I had no desire that he, too, should be miserable; in my most wretched moments the feeling had never entered my heart.

“The rustle of silk caused me to start from my position as I was bending over the book. It was only the night wind sweeping through an open casement that sent the curtain, which had dropped over it, streaming out like a banner into the room. I stood upright, silent and breathless; for, on a low couch, which the window drapery had half-concealed till now, lay Grenville Murray. The lamp shone full upon his face, and even from the distance I could see the change which a year of mental agitation had made in it.

“I went softly to the couch, knelt down, and gazed upon him with a hushed and calm feeling, like that which a mother might know while bending over the couch of a beloved, but wayward, child. Twice the clock chimed the hour, and still I knelt by that couch and gazed on that pale, sleeping face, with a cold, hopeless sorrow which had no voice for lamentation.

“A third time the clock beat. I bent forward and pressed my lips to his forehead for the first time in my life. Oh! how my heart swelled to my lips with that one soft kiss. It seemed breaking with solemn tenderness—such tenderness as we give to the dead before the beloved clay is taken from us forever. My lips were cold and tremulous, but he did not awake beneath the pressure, and I did not repeat it, nor look on him again. I knew we were parting forever, but had no power to look back.

“I passed from the house slowly, and with a solemn feeling of desolation, as one might tread through a graveyard alone, and at midnight.

“In the disguise which had served me so well I sailed for America. I had no wish to mingle with my race, but took my way from New York to the valley of the Mohawk and sought the presence of Sir William Johnson. To him I revealed myself and as much of my history as was necessary to ensure his co-operation in my plan for the future. Under a solemn promise of secrecy, which has never been broken, I entrusted my wealth to his agency and procured his promise of an escort to the tribe of Indians then located in his neighborhood. Among these savages I hoped to find perfect isolation from my race; to begin a new life and cast the old one away forever; this was more like rising from the grave into another life than anything human existence had to offer. I remained some months in the Mohawk Valley, waiting for news from England. I was anxious to hear that my efforts at concealment had been effectual and that my friends really believed me dead. News came at last that shook my soul to its centre once more. Varnham, my husband, was dead. He would not believe in my destruction, and after strict search traced me to London, and on shipboard, spite of my disguise.

“He put my property in trust, and taking the next ship that sailed followed me to America, with what purpose I never knew. The ship was lost, and every soul on board perished.”

CHAPTER X
QUEEN ESTHER

“The Shawnee Indians had long been governed by a woman, whose name was both feared and respected through all the Six Nations. I need not dwell either upon her cruelty or her greatness. Had Elizabeth, of blessed memory, as sarcastic history names her, been thrown among savages, she would have been scarcely a rival to this remarkable chieftainess. The same indomitable love of power—the same ferocious affections, caressing the neck one day, which she gave to the axe on the next—the same haughty assumption of authority marked Queen Esther, the forest sovereign, and Elizabeth, the monarch of England. Both were arrogant, crafty, selfish and ruthless, proving their power to govern, only as they became harsh and unwomanly.

“Queen Esther was the widow of a great chief, whose authority she had taken up at his grave, and never laid down during twenty-five years, when Gi-engwa-tah, her eldest son, had earned a right to wear the eagle plume and fill his father’s place on the warpath and at the council table. The great secret of this woman’s power over her tribe lay in her superior intelligence and the remnants of an early education; for she was a white woman, brought in the bloom of girlhood from Canada, where she had been taken prisoner in the wars between the French and the Six Nations. Her father was a governor of Canada, and she had been destined to fill a high station in civilized life, but she soon learned to prefer savage rule to all the remembrances of a delicately nurtured childhood, and, wedded to a native chief, flung off the refinements of life, save where they added to her influence among the savages.

“Her name, like her history, was thrown back upon the past—the very blood in her veins seemed to have received a ferocious tint. She was, doubtless, from the first, a savage at heart. Because this woman was, like myself, cast out by her own free will from civilized life, I sought her in her wild home, and, under an escort from Sir William Johnson, claimed a place in her tribe. The lands around Seneca Lake were then in possession of the Shawnees. Queen Esther occupied a spacious lodge at the head of this lake and had put large tracts of land under cultivation around it.

“Around this dwelling she had gathered all the refinements of her previous life that could be wrested from rude nature or animal strength. Her lodge possessed many comforts that the frontier settlers might have envied. The lands were rich with corn and fruit. Her apple orchards blossomed and cast their fruit on the edge of the wilderness. The huts of her people were embowered with peach-trees, and purple plums dropped upon the forest sward at their doors. In times of peace Queen Esther was a provident and wise sovereign. In war—but I need not say how terrible she was in war. Beautiful as I have described it, was the country of the Shawnees when my escort drew up in front of Queen Esther’s lodge. She came forth to meet me, arrayed in her wild, queenly garb and treading the green turf like an empress. She was then more than sixty years of age, but her stately form bore no marks of time; there was not a thread of silver in her black hair, and her eyes were like those of an eagle—clear and piercing.

“She read Sir William’s letter, casting glances from that to my face, as if perusing the two with one thought; then, advancing to my horse, she lifted me to the ground and gave me her hand to kiss, as if I had been a child and she an emperor who had vouchsafed an act of gallantry. ‘It is well,’ she said. ‘You shall have a mat in my lodge. Gi-en-gwa-tah shall spread it with his own hands, for we of the white blood bring wise thoughts and sweet words to the tribe, and must not work like squaws. When women sit in council the braves spread their mats and spear salmon for them. This is my law.’

“I answered promptly that I had brought gold, knowledge and a true heart into the wilderness; that all I asked was a corner in her lodge, and permission to rest among her people; to learn their ways and be one of them till death called me away.

“‘It is well,’ she answered. ‘This letter says that you have fled from many tears, and brought wisdom and gold from over the big waters. Come, I have a robe embroidered with my own hand, and plumage from flame-colored birds, with which my women shall crown you before my son comes from the war-council of the Six Nations. My eyes are getting dim, and I can no longer string the wampum or work garlands on the robes my women have prepared for my needle. You shall be eyes to me; when my voice grows weak you shall talk sweet words to the warriors, and they will obey me still. When I am dead, struck down with the white frost of age, then you shall be queen in my place; I will teach the chiefs to obey you. Have I spoken well?’

“She waited for no answer, but led me into the lodge, brought forth a robe of embroidered skins such as clothed her own stately person, and clothed me in it with her own hands. If she used any other ceremony of adoption, I did not understand it, nor indeed how much this act portended. Queen Esther was a shrewd woman, ambitious for herself and her tribe. She knew well the value of the gold which I had deposited with Sir William Johnson, and how rich a harvest my coming might secure to them.

“Queen Esther kept her promise. Her influence placed me at once in a position of power. She never asked my name, but gave me that which she had cast aside on renouncing her own race—Catharine Montour.

“I was among the children of nature, in the broad, deep forests of a new world. I had broken every tie which had bound me to my kind, and was free. For the first time in my life I felt the force of liberty and the wild, sublime pleasures of an unshackled spirit. Every new thought which awoke my heart in that deep wilderness was full of sublimity and wild poetic strength. There was something of stern, inborn greatness in the savages who had adopted me—something picturesque in their raiment, and majestic in their wild, untaught eloquence, that aroused the new and stern properties of my nature till my very being seemed changed.

“The wish to be loved and cherished forsook me forever. New energies started to life, and I almost scorned myself that I had ever bowed to the weakness of affection. What was dominion over one heart compared to the knowledge that the wild, fierce spirits of a thousand savage beings were quelled by the sound of my footsteps?—not with a physical and cowardly fear, but with an awe which was of the spirit—a superstitious dread, which was to them a religion. Without any effort of my own, I became a being of fear and wonder to the whole savage nation. They looked upon me as a spirit from the great hunting-ground, sent to them by Manitou, endowed with beauty and supernatural powers, which demanded all their rude worship, and fixed me among them as a deity.

“I encouraged this belief, for a thirst for rule and ascendency was strong upon me. I became a despot and yet a benefactress in the exercise of my power, and the distribution of my wealth. Did one of those strong, savage creatures dare to offend me, I had but to lift my finger, and he was stripped of his ornaments and scourged forth from his nation, a disgraced and abandoned alien, without home, or people, or friends. On the other hand, did they wish for trinkets, or beads, or powder for the rifles which I had presented to them, they had to bend low to their ‘White Prophetess’ as she passed; to weave her lodge with flowers, and line it with rich furs; to bring her a singing-bird, or to carry her litter through the rough passes of the mountains, and a piece of smooth bark, covered with signs which they knew nothing of, was sent to Sir William Johnson, and lo, their wants were supplied.

“This was power, such as my changed heart panted for. I grew stern, selfish and despotic, among these rude savages, but never cruel. Your people wrong me there; no drop of blood has ever been shed by me or through my instrumentality; but my gold has brought many poor victims from the stake, who falsely believe that my vindictive power had sent them there; my entreaties have saved many a village from the flames, and many hearths from desolation, where my name is spoken as a word of fear.

“The eldest son of Queen Esther was a noble. He came of his father’s race, with something of refinement, which his mother never could entirely cast aside, blended with it. From her early recollections Queen Esther had given him fragments of a rude poetical education, and this, with the domestic refinement of her lodge, had lifted him unconsciously above the other chiefs of his tribe.

“He not only possessed that bravery which won the admiration of his people, and was essential to their respect, but in his character were combined all the elements of a warrior and a statesman. Independent of this superior knowledge, his mind was naturally too majestic and penetrating to yield me the homage which was so readily rendered by the more ignorant of his tribe.

“It is painful to dwell on this period of my life. Suffice it, again I heard the pleadings of love from the untutored lips of a savage chief. I, who had fled from the very name of affection as from a pestilence—who had given up country, home, the semblance of existence that my heart might be at rest, was forced to listen to the pleadings of love from a savage, in the heart of an American wilderness. A savage chief, proud of his prowess, haughty in his barbarous power, came with a lordly confidence to woo me as his wife. My heart recoiled at the unnatural suggestion, but I had no scorn for the brave Indian who made it. If his mode of wooing was rough, it was also eloquent, sincere, manly; and those were properties which my spirit had ever answered with respect. No; I had nothing of scorn for the red warrior, but I rebuked him for his boldness, and threatened to forsake his tribe forever should he dare to renew the subject.

“A month or two after the kingly savage declared his bold wishes a contest arose between the Shawnees and a neighboring tribe, and the chief went angry to the warpath. One day his party returned to the encampment, bringing with them three prisoners, a white man, his wife and child. My heart ached when I heard of this, for I dared not, as usual, entreat the chief for their release, nor even offer to purchase their freedom with gold. His disappointment had rendered him almost morose, and I shuddered to think of the reward he might require for the liberation of his prisoners. I had full cause for apprehension.

“From the day that I rejected her son, Queen Esther had kept proudly aloof from me. She did not deign to expostulate, but guarded her pride with stern silence, while a storm of savage passions lowered on her brow, and sounded in her fierce tread, till her presence would have been a terror to me had I been of a nature to fear anything.

“This woman seemed to rejoice at the idea of wreaking the vengeance she would not express in words on my helpless compatriots, and prepared herself to join this horrid festival of death in all the pomp of her war-plumes and most gorgeous raiment. For the first time in my life I humbled myself before this woman, on my knees, for she was one to exact the most abject homage. I besought her to save my countrymen from death.

“She met my entreaties with a cold sneer that froze me to the heart.

“‘It is well,’ she said, wrapping her robe around her with a violence that made its wampum fringes rattle like a storm of shot. ‘The woman who refuses the great chief of the Shawnees when he would build her a lodge larger than his mother’s, should be proud, and stand up with her face to the sun, not whine like a baby because her people do not know how to die.’

“Her air and voice were more cruel than her words. I saw that my intercession would only add to the tortures that I was powerless to prevent, for if the mother was so unrelenting what had I to expect from the son?

“Queen Esther tore her garments from my clasp, and plunged into the forest to join her son.

“I shudder even now, when I think of the horrible sensation which crept over me, as the warriors went forth from the camp, file after file, painted and plumed with gorgeous leathers, each with his war-club and tomahawk, to put three beings, of my blood and nation, to a death of torture.

“I dared not plead for their release in person, but sent to offer ransom, earnestly appealing to the generosity of the chief in my message. He returned me no answer. I could do nothing more, but as the hours crept by, my heart was very, very heavy; it seemed as if the sin of blood were about to be heaped upon it.

“The night came on, dark and gloomy as the grave. The whole tribe, even to the women and children, had gone into the forest, and I was alone in the great lodge—almost alone in the village. There was something more appalling than I can describe in the dense gloom that settled on the wilderness, in the whoop and fierce cries of the revelling savages, which surged up through the trees like the roar and rant of a herd of wild beasts wrangling over their prey.

“Not a star was in the sky, not a sound stirred abroad—nothing save the black night and the horrid din of those blood-thirsty savages met my senses. Suddenly, a sharp yell cut through the air like the cry of a thousand famished hyenas, then a spire of flame darted up from the murky forest, and shot into the darkness with a clear, lurid brightness, like the flaming tongue of a dragon, quivering and afire with its own venom. Again that yell rang out—again and again, till the very air seemed alive with savage tongues.

“I could bear no more; my nerves had been too madly excited. I sprang forward with a cry that rang through the darkness almost as wildly as theirs, and rushed into the forest.

“They were congregated there in the light of that lurid fire, dancing and yelling like a troop of carousing demons; their tomahawks and scalping-knives flashed before me, and their fierce eyes glared more fiercely as I rushed through them to the presence of their chief. The dance was stopped by a motion of his war-club, and he listened with grave attention to my frantic offer of beads or blankets or gold to any amount, in ransom for his prisoners. He refused all; but one ransom could purchase the lives of those three human beings, and that I could not pay. It was far better that blood should be shed than that I should force my heart to consummate a union so horrible as mine with this savage.

“I turned from the relentless chief, sorrowing and heart-stricken. The blood of his poor victims seemed clogging my feet as I made my way through the crowd of savage forms that only waited my disappearance to drag them forth to death. Even while I passed the death-fire, fresh pine was heaped upon it, and a smothered cry burst forth from the dusky crowd as a volume of smoke rolled up and revealed the victims.

“They were bound to the trunk of a large pine, which towered within the glare of the death-fire, its heavy limbs reddening and drooping in the cloud of smoke and embers that surged through them to the sky, and its slender leaves falling in scorched and burning showers to the earth, whenever a gust of wind sent the flames directly among its foliage.

“The prisoners were almost entirely stripped of clothing, and the lurid brightness shed over the pine revealed their pale forms with terrible distinctness. The frightened child crouched upon the ground, clinging to the knees of his mother, and quaking in all its tiny limbs as the flames swept their reeking breath more and more hotly upon them. The long, black hair of the mother fell over her bent face; her arms were extended downward towards the boy, and she struggled weakly against the thongs that bound her waist, at every fresh effort which the poor thing made to find shelter in her bosom. There was one other face, pale and stern as marble, yet full of a fixed agony, which spoke of human suffering frightful to behold. That face was Grenville Murray’s.

“My feelings had been excited almost to the verge of renewed insanity, but now they became calm—calm from the force of astonishment, and from the strong resolve of self-sacrifice which settled upon them. I turned and forced my way through the crowd of savage forms, rushing toward that hapless group, and again stood before their chief. I pointed toward the prisoners now concealed by the smoke and eddying flames.

“‘Call away those fiends,’ I said. ‘Give back all that has been taken from the prisoners. Send them to Canada, with a guard of fifty warriors, and I will become your wife.’

“A blaze of exultation swept over that savage face, and the fire kindled it up with wild grandeur. I saw the heaving of his chest, the fierce joy that flashed from his eyes, but in that moment of stern resolve, my heart would not have shrunk from its purpose though the fang of an adder had been fixed in it. The chief lifted his war-club and uttered a long peculiar cry. Instantly the savages that were rushing like so many demons toward their prey fell back and ranged themselves in a broad circle around their chief.

“He spoke a few sentences in the Indian tongue. Words of energetic eloquence they must have been to have torn that savage horde from their destined victim’s, for like wild beasts they seemed athirst for blood. When the chief ceased speaking, the tribe arose with a morose gravity that concealed their disappointment, and dispersed among the trees; the mellow tramp of their moccasins died away, and fifty warriors alone stood around their chief, ready to escort the prisoners to a place of safety.

“I drew back beneath the concealment of a tree, and secure in my changed dress, saw them lead forth the prisoners. I heard the sobs of the happy mother as the boy clung, half in joy and half in affright, to her bosom. I saw tears stand on the pale and quivering cheek of the father, as he strove to utter his gratitude. I heard the tramp of the horses, and the measured tread of the fifty warriors come faintly from the distance; then the fire which was to have been the death-flame of Grenville Murray and his household, streamed up into the solitude, and in its red glare I stood before the savage whose slave I had become.”

CHAPTER XI
THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT

Toward sunset, on the same day that witnessed Catharine Montour’s interview with the missionary, Mary Derwent wandered alone into the forest, for her spirit more than ever felt the need of solitude. With a strong religious principle, which had gradually strengthened in her young heart during her daily communion with the high things in nature, she had striven to conquer the sweet impulses of love that are the heritage of womanhood, and to lend all her soul toward that heaven to which the missionary had so tenderly pointed her.

She wandered through the forest, indulging in a tranquil happiness which had never visited her before. The flowers seemed smiling with a new beauty as she turned aside, that they might not be trodden into the moss by her footsteps; the birds seemed vocal with a sweeter music, and the air came balmy to her lips; yet the day, in reality, was no finer than a hundred others had been.

Mary lingered awhile on the shelf of rocks, which we have described in a former chapter, as overhanging the Susquehanna, nearly opposite Monockonok Island, before she went down to the canoe which she had moored at its base. It seemed as if this spot was henceforth to be a scene of adventure to her, for scarcely had she been there a moment, when the copsewood above her head was agitated, as it had been on the previous day, and a young man, of two or three and twenty, stepped cautiously out upon the platform which shot above the shelf on which she stood, and where the Indian girl had previously appeared.

Mary sank back to the birch, where she could command a full view of his person without being herself seen. He was scarcely above the middle height, and of slight person, but muscular, and giving, in every firmly knitted limb, indications of strength greater than his size would have warranted. The face was one which might have been pronounced intellectual and striking. His forehead, low and broad, was shaded by hair of the deepest brown; the nose, a little too prominent for beauty, was thin and finely cut, and the large black eyes full of brilliancy, which was a part of themselves rather than a light from the soul, gave a masculine spirit to his head, which redeemed the more earthly and coarser mould of the mouth and chin.

He was expensively dressed for the period and condition of our country, but his neckcloth was loosened at the throat, as if to refresh himself with air after some severe physical exertion, and his richly laced hand-ruffles hung dripping with water over a pair of wrists which were by far too slender and white ever to have submitted to much labor. His garments throughout were dashed with waterdrops, and he had evidently been rowing hard upon the river. He wiped away the perspiration which stood in large drops on his forehead, and looked cautiously about, till his eyes settled in a long, anxious gaze up the stream.

In its side position Mary obtained a more perfect view of his face, and her heart throbbed with a painful feeling of surprise, for she recognized the matured lineaments of Walter Butler, a Tory officer, who had visited the valley some months before and was the intimate friend of young Wintermoot, the young man who had so cruelly insulted her deformity when both were school-children. In his previous visit Butler had by many a rude outrage and insolent speech shocked the moral sense of the inhabitants, and it was an evil sign when he and the Wintermoots were sheltered under the same roof. The poor girl shrunk timidly behind the birch, for she was terrified and afraid of being discovered, but she did not withdraw so far as to prevent herself watching his movements.

After waiting a few moments, he went down, so as to preclude all possibility of being observed from the island, and uttered the same sharp whistle that had answered the Indian girl’s summons on the previous day. Mary almost started from her concealment with surprise, when the brushwood was again torn back, and a strange woman, singularly attired, stepped down on the platform, and stood directly before the young man as he arose from his stooping position.

Butler started back almost to the verge of the precipice, when he found himself thus unexpectedly confronted. His face became crimson to the temples, and he looked with an air of extreme embarrassment, now on the strange woman, then on the path which led from the precipice, as if meditating an escape. The strange woman kept her eyes fixed keenly upon his movements; when he stepped a pace forward, as if about to leave her presence, she made a detaining motion with her hand.

“You were expecting Tahmeroo, the Shawnee maiden. I am Catharine Montour, her mother.”

The blood suddenly left the young man’s face. He bit his lips impatiently, for a half-checked oath trembled upon them; but his confusion was too overwhelming for any attempt at an answer. After a moment’s pause, Catharine, who kept her piercing gaze steadily fixed on his face, drew forth the string of red coral which had been given to her daughter, and said:

“Last night my daughter told me all that you bade her conceal; from your first meeting on the shores of Seneca Lake, down to the crafty falsehood of this pledge, I know everything.”

The crimson flush again spread over the young man’s face, his eyes sunk beneath the scrutiny fixed upon him, and he turned his head aside, muttering:

“The beautiful witch has exposed me at last,” then he looked Catharine Montour in the face with an affectation of cool effrontery, and said:

“Well, madam, if Tahmeroo has chosen to confide in her mother, I do not see anything remarkable in it, except that I should be sought out as a party in the affair.”

“Young man,” exclaimed the unhappy mother, in a voice of stern and bitter anguish, which made even his heart recoil, “you know not what you have done—you cannot dream of the wretchedness which you have heaped on a being who never injured you. I can find no words to tell how dear that child was to me, how completely every thought and wish was centred in her pure existence. I had guarded her as the strings of my own heart—every thought of her young mind was pure—every impulse an affectionate one—I will not reproach you, man! I will try not to hate you, though, Heaven is my judge, I have just cause for hate. Listen to me—I did not come here to heap invectives on you——”

“May I be permitted to ask what you did come for?” interrupted Butler, with a cool effrontery, which was now real, for his awe of Catharine Montour abated when he saw her sternness giving way to the grief and indignation of a wronged mother. “I really am at a loss to know why you should address me in this strange manner. I have not stolen the girl from your wigwam, nor have I the least intention of doing so foolish a thing. You have your daughter, what more do you require?”

Catharine Montour drew her lips hard together, and her frame shook with a stern effort to preserve her composure.

“I would have justice done my child,” said she, in a voice so low and calm, yet with such iron determination in its tone, that the young man grew pale as it fell upon his ear; and though his words continued bold, the voice in which they were uttered was that of a man determined to keep his position, though he begins to feel the ground giving way beneath his feet.

“This demand, in the parlance of our nation, would mean that I should submit to a marriage with the girl,” he said; “but even her mother can hardly suppose that I, a descendant of one of England’s proudest families, should marry with a Shawnee half-breed, though she were beautiful as an angel, and amiable as her respected mamma. You have evidently seen something of life, madam, and must see how impossible it is that I should marry your daughter, yet in what other form this strange demand is to be shaped, I cannot imagine.”

Catharine Montour forced herself to hear him out, though a scornful cloud gathered on her forehead. Her lips writhed, her eyes flashed with the angry contempt which filled her soul against the arrogance and selfishness betrayed in the being before her.

“It is a legal marriage, nevertheless, which I require of you,” she said. “Listen before you reply—I have that to offer which may reconcile you even to an union with the daughter of a Shawnee chief. You but now boasted of English birth and of noble lineage. You are young, and one’s native land is very dear; you should wish to dwell in it. Make my daughter your wife—go with her to your own country, where her Indian blood will be unsuspected, or, if known, will be no reproach, and I pledge myself, within one week after your marriage, to put you in possession of fifty thousand pounds as her dowry—to relinquish her forever,” here Catharine’s voice trembled in spite of her effort to speak firmly, “and to hold communion with her only on such terms as you may yourself direct. Nay, do not speak, but hear me out before you answer. I make this offer because the happiness of my child is dearer to me than my own life. I cannot crush her young life by separating her from you forever; better far that I should become childless and desolate again. Take her to your own land; be a kind, generous protector to her, and there is wealth in England that will make the amount I offer of little moment. For her sake I will once more enter the world, and claim my own. But deal harshly with her—let her feel a shadow of unkindness after you take her from the shelter of my love, and my vengeance shall follow you to the uttermost ends of the earth. Give me no answer yet, but reflect on the alternative should you refuse one who has but to speak her will, and a thousand fierce savages are on your track by day and by night, till your heart is haunted to death by its own fears, or is crushed beneath the blow which sooner or later some dark hand will deal in the requital of the disgrace which you have put upon the daughter of a Shawnee.”

Before Butler could recover from his astonishment at her extraordinary proposal, Catharine had disappeared among the brushwood. He stood as if lost in deep thought for several minutes after her departure, then walked the platform to and fro with an air of indecision and excitement, which was more than once denoted by a low laugh, evidently at the singular position in which he found himself placed. Once he muttered a few indistinct words, and looked towards the island with a smile which Mary was at a loss to understand. There was something of the plotting demon in it, which made her tremble as if some harm had been intended to herself.

When Catharine Montour returned, Butler was the first to speak. “Should I be inclined to accept your proposal,” he said, “and to speak candidly, your daughter is beautiful enough to tempt a man to commit much greater folly; how can I be certain of your power to endow her as you promise?”

Catharine drew up her heavy sleeve and displayed the jewelled serpent coiled around her arm.

“This is some proof of my power to command wealth; at the encampment you shall be convinced beyond the possibility of a doubt.”

“But how am I to be secure of personal safety, should the proof be insufficient to satisfy me, or should I see other reason to decline this strange contract. Once in the power of your savage tribe, I shall have but little chance of independent choice.”

Catharine made no reply, but a smile of peculiar meaning passed over her face. She took a small whistle from her bosom, blew a shrill call and stood quietly enjoying the surprise of her companion, as some fifty or sixty red warriors started up from behind the shattered rocks and stunted trees that towered back from the precipice on which they stood, each armed with a rifle and with a tomahawk gleaming at his girdle.

“Were compulsion intended, you see I am not without power; were I but to lift this hand, you would be in eternity before it dropped to my side again; but fear nothing; go with me to the encampment, and on the honor of an Englishwoman, you shall be free should I fail to return and make good my promise.”

“You give me excellent proofs of freedom,” said the young man, glancing at the dusky faces lowering on him from, the shrubbery on every side.

Catharine stepped forward, and spoke a few words in the Indian tongue. Directly each swarthy form left its station, and the whole force departed in a body over the back of the precipice. Directly a fleet of canoes was unmoored from the sheltering underbrush that fringed the shore, and shot away up stream towards the Lackawanna gap. When the tramp of their receding feet died away in the forest, Catharine returned to the young man.

“You must be convinced, now, that no treachery is intended; that you are free to decide.”

“I do not exactly fancy the idea of being forced to take a wife, whether I will or not; and at best, all this looks marvellously like it. But without farther words, I accept your proposal, on condition, however, that Tahmeroo is suffered to remain with her people till I may wish to retreat to England.

“There is an aristocratic old gentleman in the valley of the Mohawk, who calls himself my father; he might not fancy the arrangement, were I to introduce my Indian bride to the companionship of his wife and daughters. Arrange it that she remains with the tribe for the present, and settle the rest as you will.”

Catharine gave a joyful start, which she strove in vain to suppress. The happiness of keeping her child a little longer made every nerve in her body thrill; but she grew calm in an instant, and coldly consented to that which she would have given worlds to obtain, but dared not propose.

Butler spoke again.

“Now, madam, I entreat you to return to the camp. I give my honor that I will follow in a half-hour’s time, but in mercy grant me a few minutes’ breathing-space. The thought of this sudden marriage affects me like a shower-bath; it is like forcing a man to be happy at the point of the bayonet. Think of having a half a dozen of those savage-looking rascals for groomsmen—rifles, scalping-knives, and all. I wish my dear, stern old father were here to give the bride away; the thought of his fury half reconciles me to the thing, independent of the thousands. Who, under heavens, would have thought of seeking an heiress among a nest of Shawnee squaws?”

The latter part of his speech was spoken in soliloquy, for Catharine had departed at his first request, without any apparent suspicion of his good faith. The concealed girl was both surprised and touched to observe that tears were streaming down the face which had appeared so stern and calm but a moment before.

“She is left to me a little longer—I could have blessed him when he said it.”

Mary heard these words as the extraordinary woman passed, and her pure heart ached for the unhappy mother.

Butler remained on the rock till Catharine Montour had entirely disappeared; then he darted down the hill, and before Mary dared to venture forth from her concealment, his canoe was cutting across the river toward Monockonok Island.

Mary stood almost petrified with astonishment when she saw the direction he was taking. “What had Walter Butler to do in the vicinity of her home?” Her heart throbbed painfully as she connected this question with the conversation which she had overheard between her sister and Edward Clark, on the previous day. She stood motionless till his canoe shot into the little cove where her own was always moored, and when a sharp whistle sounded from that direction, she bent breathlessly forward with her eyes fixed intently on the door of her own dwelling. It opened, and her sister, Jane, came out with her sun-bonnet in her hand, and walked swiftly toward the cove.

But the poor deformed girl pressed her hands hard upon her heart, and groaned aloud, when her suspicions were thus painfully confirmed. She sank upon the ground, and burying her face in her hands, prayed fervently and with an earnestness of purpose that brought something of relief to her fears. For half an hour she sat upon the rock with her pale face looking toward the island, watching the cove through the tears which almost blinded. Her silent, anxious sorrow was more like that of an angel grieving over the apostasy of a sister spirit, than that of a mortal suffering under the conviction of moral wrong in a beloved object. She saw her sister slowly return to the house, and remarked that she stopped more than once to look after Walter Butler, as he urged his canoe toward the precipice again. Mary buried her face in her hands, and held her breath, as his footsteps smote along the neighboring path, and were lost in the forest.

Campbell’s Ledge and Scoville’s Island

Catharine Montour sat in the door of her lodge at the foot of Campbell’s Ledge. The encampment was almost deserted. Few women ever followed the warriors when they were called to a distant council-fire, and the men had gone into the forests on the opposite shore of the river, to meet their brethren from the Wind gap. The Tories from about Fort Wintermoot were to join the council, and from her high lodge Catharine could see a hundred council-fires gleaming out from the dense foliage which clothed the opposite hill.

The night was overcast, the moon and stars floated in soft gray vapors overhead, or were covered with black clouds sometimes sending pale ghastly gleams upon the mountains, and again whelming everything in darkness. Catharine was accustomed to the gloom of the forest, and her spirit always rose to meet the storms that swept over it; but now there was really no tempest, nothing but sombre stillness all around. The winds muttered and moaned along the mountain side. The waters rushed heavily down the valley, and those council-fires were suggestive of scenes more gloomy still. Like the black clouds overhead, they were full of brooding destruction.

But more sombre than all was the heart of Catharine Montour. On the morrow she was to resign all right over her only child to a man against whom her whole soul revolted. A bad, cruel man, whose name had even now become a terror wherever his foot had trod. She knew well that his influence among the Indians had always been pernicious; that as the war of the Revolution gathered strength, he had instigated the various savage tribes to participate in the contest and urged on cruelties that even savage warfare had not yet invented. A thousand times would that woman have died rather than given her daughter up to his wicked power, but here her supremacy was at fault. Tahmeroo loved the man, and the mother had suffered so bitterly in her own life from thwarted affection, that she dared not interpose a stern authority over the wishes of her child, otherwise the heathenish bond that already united those two persons would have been rent asunder, though she had died in the effort.

But now she had tenderness for her child, and the savage ambition of the Shawnee chief to contend against. It had long been his policy to unite his daughter with some white leader of power, for he was sufficiently educated himself to feel how unfit she would become for the savage life in which she was born; besides he wished to strengthen his political alliance with the whites and Col. John Butler, the father of this young man, was well known to the Indians as an officer of high authority among the Tories. His Tioga Rangers carried terror wherever they went, and the Shawnees had fought side by side with them in the Revolution too often for any doubt of their leader or his son. In acts of bravery, stern revenge and subtle diplomacy, such as the savages respected most, Walter Butler surpassed his father; and when Catharine looked toward the council-fires, she knew well that this young man was there, pouring his poisonous counsel into the listening ears of her people. How terribly that poison might work against herself, she did not yet know. In fact many events had transpired in the tribe during her absence from the settlement on Seneca Lake, of which she was not fully informed. Her grim mother-in-law, Queen Esther, had been busy during her late sojourn in the Mohawk Valley, and the effects of her crafty statesmanship were felt among the struggling revolutionists during the entire war. In this bold bad youth the cruel woman had found an ally, wicked and relentless as herself; in the war-councils of the Shawnees, and at the council-table of the whites he was her firm supporter.

Queen Esther had never forgiven Catharine’s first refusal of her son; the indignity galled her savage pride. To this was added jealousy of the influence and power which the younger woman had soon obtained over the chief and his tribe. In the intelligence, beauty, and stern will of Catharine, Queen Esther found a rival whom she could neither overpower, despise, or intimidate. Both as a white woman and an Indian princess, she soon learned to regard her daughter-in-law with intense hate.

Like her son, Queen Esther had resolved to strengthen herself by an alliance with Tahmeroo and some partisan of her own. The chief loved his daughter with all the strength of his rude and poetic nature, and readily listened to anything that promised to give her happiness, and which should also forward these purposes.

When he learned from the crafty old queen that Tahmeroo had met the young white chief, Walter Butler, on the lake shore, while out in her canoe, and that an attachment had sprung up between them, both his ambition and his affections were aroused. Notwithstanding the great influence that Catharine had obtained over him, the pride of manhood was strong within him, and his own right of action he yielded to no one. In this Indian blood and breeding spoke out. Over his wife, his child, and his tribe, he kept dominion. Against his will even Catharine was powerless.

When he questioned Tahmeroo, and learned how completely the young white man had wound himself around her heart; when Butler himself, knowing well how lightly such ties were regarded by his own people, came and asked his daughter in marriage, according to the usages of the tribe, Gi-en-gwa-tah, regardless of the mother’s absence, gave his child away, and adopted the young man as a Shawnee brave. With the Indians these ceremonies were solemn rites—with Walter Butler only one of the wild adventures he delighted in.

Directly after this heathen marriage, that section of the tribe which inhabited the head of Seneca Lake went to meet their brother Shawnees, who still remained on the Susquehanna. A swift runner was sent to inform Catharine Montour of the movement, and when she rejoined the warriors of her tribe, they were encamped in the Lackawanna gap, where a lodge had already been erected for her.

On the day of her arrival, and before she knew anything of these events, Tahmeroo had stealthily left the camp and made her way down the river in search of Butler. She knew well that some special ceremony was necessary to a marriage among the whites, and shrunk with terror from the very thought of confiding what had passed to her mother, till these forms were added to the Indian customs that already united them.

Butler had pacified her entreaties by the gift of coral, which Catharine took from under her pillow, and which led to that midnight explanation, and afterward to her interview with the missionary.

And now the unhappy woman sat waiting for the time of her sacrifice to arrive. As the shadows gathered darker and darker around her, Tahmeroo stole softly to the door and sat down on the turf at her feet; an hour back Catharine had spent some time in arraying her child for the ceremony that was to follow the breaking up of the council. With but silent indignation at the wrong that had been done her by the chief and his mother, she had performed her task. Of all her unhappy life this hour was filled with the heaviest and deepest trouble to that unhappy woman. Tahmeroo nestled close to her mother, took one hand in hers very tenderly, and laid her cheek in the palms.

“Mother, why are you so sad? Tahmeroo is very happy, but when she begins to smile this mournful look turns her joy into sighs.”

Catharine turned her heavy eyes on that beautiful face. How strange it looked! The costly raiment which had displaced her savage costume seemed unnatural alike to mother and child.

“And you are truly happy, my child? say it again.”

“Very happy!” answered the maiden, smiling.

“And you love this man very—very much?”

“Oh, so much, dear mother!”

“I am glad of this my child. I have no hope for you except in this love.”

“No hope save in this love! Then your whole life may be full of hope. Without this love, Tahmeroo would die; for it fills all the world to her. Oh, mother, I did not know how beautiful the earth was till he came; the water down which his canoe passes grows pure as I look; if his hand touches a flower, it brightens to a star under my eye; the winter-berries turn to gold as he gathers them for me; I could kneel down and kiss the moss which his foot has walked over; the sound of his moccasins, away off in the forest, makes my heart leap for joy. Is not this love, mother?”

Catharine sobbed aloud; every sweet word that fell from her child brought its memory to stab her.

“Speak to me, mother; are you offended that I love him so much?”

Catharine writhed in her chair; it seemed as if she must die. Had she fled to the wilderness only to crucify her heart over again in the person of her child? Were the consequences of one error to follow her forever and ever? She lifted her clasped hands to heaven, and wildly asked these questions as if the lurid stars could answer her from the blackness that covered them. “Are you sorry that I love him so?” said Tahmeroo, weeping softly.

Catharine buried her face in both hands, while a struggle for composure shook her whole frame.

“See, see,” whispered Tahmeroo, pointing toward the opposite mountains, “the council-fires have gone out. There, now that the moon gleams, I can see their canoes on the water. In a few moments he will be here.”

Catharine looked suddenly up.

“Come,” she said, taking Tahmeroo by the hand, “we must be ready.”

As she spoke, a noise in the brushwood made her pause and listen; directly a man came forward, walking quietly toward the lodge.

Even in the darkness Tahmeroo could see that her mother turned pale.

It was the missionary who, punctual to his appointment, had found his way to the encampment. He sat down in the dim lights of the lodge. No one spoke; for he, too, seemed impressed by the solemn sadness of the hour. The next ten minutes were spent in dead silence—you could almost have heard the wild bound of Tahmeroo’s heart, when sound of coming footsteps came up from the forest. Still no word was spoken. The pine knots heaped on the hearth gleamed up suddenly, and sent a ruddy glow over the lodge, revealing a strange, strange picture.

Catharine Montour sat on the couch of scarlet cloth and soft furs, robed in the same dress which she wore in the morning. Her arms were folded over her bosom, and her eyes dwelt sadly on the ground, though at every noise from without they were directed with a sharp, anxious look towards the door, that changed to a dull troubled glow, as if the approaching footsteps had something terrible in them.

Tahmeroo nestled to her mother’s side, and looked wonderingly around the lodge; now upon the missionary, who sat in a rude chair opposite, with his face shaded by his hand, then on her own strange dress, with a sort of shy curiosity; she did not quite recognize herself in that rich satin and those yellow old laces. Indeed her dress would have been remarkable to any one, either savage or civilized. Her Indian costume had been replaced by a robe of gold-colored satin, of an obsolete but graceful fashion, which had prevailed twenty years before in England. A chain of massive gold was interwoven among the braids of long hair, for the first time enwreathed about her beautiful head, after the fashion of the whites; and a pair of long filagree earrings broke the exquisite outline of her throat on the other side.

There was something a little stiff and awkward in the solemn stillness of those around her, and in the strangeness of her dress, which kept her bright eyes on the ground, and sent the smile quivering from her lips as the tramp of feet came nearer and nearer to the lodge.

While the inmates of the lodge remained waiting in silent anxiety, a shadow fell across the opening, and Butler appeared before them with his clothes in much disorder, and evidently fatigued from his long walk through the forest.

Tahmeroo sprang impulsively to meet him; the wild joy of her Indian blood revelled in her cheek, and sparkled in her dark eyes, till they met her mother’s reproving look, and felt the pitying gaze which the missionary fixed upon her. Then she shrunk back to her seat, blushing and trembling as if her natural joy at seeing the man she loved were something to be reproached for.

“Ha, my jewel of a red skin, have they made you afraid of me already?” said Butler, approaching her with a reckless kind of gaiety in his demeanor, and without appearing to observe the presence of any one except herself—“but why the deuce did you allow them to trick you out in this manner? You were a thousand times more piquant in the old dress. Come, don’t look frightened, you are beautiful enough in anything. Pray, what are these good people waiting for?”

Then turning to Catharine Montour, who had risen at his bold approach, he said, with insolent familiarity:

“Thank you, my stately madam, for sending away your nest of Shawnee friends, though you have made me expend a great deal of fierce courage for nothing. I had prepared myself to run the gantlet bravely among the red devils. Thank you again—but I hope my solemn father-in-law is to be present, I left him camped around a burning circle of pitch and hemlock, settling all creation over his calumet.”

Catharine listened with a frowning brow to his flippant speech, without deigning to answer.

“Upon my soul, this is pleasant,” said the young man, turning to the missionary. “I am invited to my own wedding, but find only faces that would make tears unnecessary at a funeral. Faith, if this is considered a cordial reception into the wigwam of one’s father-in-law, I’ll retire.”

The missionary looked gravely in his face, but did not speak; while Catharine arose with a frowning brow, and thrusting her hand under the pillows of the couch, drew forth a crimson-velvet casket, encrusted with gold, and set with three or four exquisitely painted medallions, each in itself a gem. She then drew an ebony box from under the couch, and unlocked it with some difficulty, for the spring turned heavily from disuse. This box she proceeded to open, though her hands looked cold as death, and her face was like marble as she lifted the lid.

Butler kept his eyes fixed on her movements, while he continued his unbecoming freedom of speech.

“Upon my honor,” he whispered, glancing at the happy face of Tahmeroo, and drawing her towards him, “that smile is refreshing after the gloomy brow of your august mother. Pray, my dear——”

He broke off suddenly, for that instant the Shawnee chief swept aside the bear-skin from the door of his lodge and stood in the opening, with his council-robe gathered in cumbrous drapery about his imposing person, and his high, dusky brow crowned with a coronet of scarlet feathers, whence a plume shot up from the left side of his head. He was entirely unarmed, and held his calumet loosely in his right hand.

With a single stride he confronted the young man so abruptly that he drew back, catching his breath.

“Young brave,” he said, in pure, stern English, “when the chief of the Shawnees bows his head to a woman, all other men speak low and look on the ground, listening for her voice. You speak fast. Your words come like the mountain brook that is shallow and breaks into foam, which is not good to drink. It is not well.”

The stern grandeur of this rebuke brought the blood into Butler’s face. He muttered something about a cold reception, but threw aside the flippant air which had been so offensive. It was not for his interest, or safety either, to brave the haughty Shawnee in his own encampment.

Catharine Montour came forward. She had several old documents in her hands, title deeds and letters patent, written on vellum, with broad seals, and the yellow tinge of age bespeaking their antiquity. These documents she placed in Butler’s hands.

A keen, hungry greed broke into the young man’s eyes as he read. Once or twice he turned his look from the parchment to Catharine’s face, with increasing wonder and respect.

“And all this you consent to resign in behalf of Tahmeroo,” he said, “or rather, in behalf of her husband.”

“So far as the law permits, I resign it to my daughter,” answered Catharine.

A flush stole over the young man’s forehead; he knew by her voice that she comprehended all his meanness. But he was now more anxious than Catharine herself for the ceremony that gave so much wealth to his control; and this eager wish increased when he saw the casket open in her hand. She raised a necklace and a bracelet of magnificent diamonds from among the gems which it contained, and held them out for his inspection.

“Make yourself certain of their value,” she said, in a dry, business tone, that had something of sarcasm in it, “for they are the security which I am about to offer, that my draft on Sir William Johnson shall be honorably met in a week from this date.”

“I see that you intend to make a business transaction of the affair,” replied Butler, carelessly receiving the jewels, which, however, he scrutinized with a closeness which betrayed a rapacious interest in their worth.

Catharine placed the casket in his hands with a smile of keen contempt.

“After you are fully satisfied of their value, this reverend man will receive them in trust. He has my sanction to deliver them to you three weeks from this day, should the draft which you hold in your hand remain at the time unpaid. Are you content with this arrangement?”

“I know little of the value of jewels,” replied Butler, slowly closing the casket, “but should suppose that these might be sufficient security for the money.”

“Perhaps this gentleman’s opinion will satisfy your doubts,” and taking the casket from Butler’s hand, Catharine again touched the spring and held it before the missionary.

“No, no; I am not a judge,” exclaimed the missionary, drawing back in his chair and pushing the casket away; but after a moment he looked up more composedly and said: “Excuse me, lady, I need not examine the jewels; from what I saw of them in the young gentleman’s hand, I am certain that they are worth more than the sum named.”

“Are you convinced?” said Catharine, again turning to Butler.

“Perfectly—let the ceremony proceed.”

With a kingly gesture, the chief lifted the bear-skin again, and taking Tahmeroo by the hand, led her out upon the turf in front of her mother’s lodge. Here a scene of wild grandeur presented itself. The whole encampment was surrounded by warriors in full costume, and glittering with arms. The Shawnees had risen from their council-fires, and moved in single file through the woods to the foot of Campbell’s Ledge. Here they wound themselves, rank after rank, round the encampment, till the chief and his family were hedged in by a living wall. Those in the front rank held torches of pitch pine knots kindled at the dying council-brands, which flamed up in one vast girdle of fire, lighting up the savages in their gorgeous dresses, the dense forest trees in the background, and throwing smoky gleams on the bold face of the ledge itself.

The eyes of the Shawnee chief flamed up with natural triumph as he stood upon the forest sward, which those broad lights were turning to gold under his feet, and, with a wave of his hand, motioned Butler to his side.

“White brave,” he said, “two moons ago I led my daughter to your wigwam, and, in the face of our tribe, she became your wife. It was well. But Catharine Montour is not content; she mourns that her child was given away, and she not there to rejoice. She says that your people have other laws, and that a wife given by the Shawnees is not a wife with our white fathers. Catharine is wise, and speaks well. The white brave shall make Tahmeroo his wife before his white brother here, who takes his law from the Great Spirit himself. Warriors, draw near and listen, while the young white brave makes his vow.”

The chief placed Tahmeroo’s hand in Butler’s, and grasped them both in his own, while he waved one arm on high, thus commanding the warriors to draw near.

There was a stir among the savages; rank glided into rank, circle closed upon circle, till a triple ring of torches encircled the young pair, and a sea of waving plumes, wild faces, and sharp, glittering eyes, surged back into the forest. All this concourse of men stood motionless, obedient to the lifted hand of their chief.

Catharine Montour came forth from the lodge, pale and rigid, as if she were going to execution; after her walked the missionary, with a movement so still that it seemed a shadow gliding over the grass. He took his place before the young couple, opened his prayer-book, and commenced the ceremony. There was a slight delay, for Butler was unprovided with a ring. Catharine drew one from her finger, and gave it to the missionary. He touched her hand in receiving this ring. It was cold as ice.

It was a wonderful sound in the heart of that dense forest, the voice of a devout Christian giving that solemn marriage benediction, girded round by savages who had scarcely ever heard of the true God in their lives. But a strange sight it was when the haughty chief, the proud English lady, the minister, and that newly married couple sank gently to their knees, and all that tribe of savages fell to the earth also, with their swarthy foreheads in the dust, while the voice of that good man rose clear and loud, piercing the heavens with its solemn eloquence. Even the savages looked at each other with awe, and trod stealthily as they broke up in bands, and moved back toward the woods.

It was, indeed, a holy hour; for, though blood, flame, and rapine marked the course of that tribe for years after that august ceremony, the Indians sometimes grew less relentless when a cry for mercy reminded them of the marriage of their chief’s daughter. When all was over, the missionary departed noiselessly as he came. The chief was disappointed when he looked round and saw that he was gone. He had munificently prepared a present of furs and wampum, which he desired to present, after the fashion of the whites. Catharine Montour saw nothing; she was still prostrate on the earth.

Butler went away soon after the missionary, scarcely deigning to make an excuse for his absence or name the time of his return. Tahmeroo gazed after him till great tears gathered in her eyes. Then a sudden thought—a quick pain; and, while her father gave orders to his warriors, and her mother bowed herself in the dust, she darted into the woods. Still dressed in those singular wedding garments, she forced her path through the forest along the mountain stream, and down the steep ramparts of Falling Spring, till she came out upon the river. Fragments of golden satin and rich lace were torn from her dress, and left clinging to brushwood and thorns in her passage, but she took no heed; the Indian blood in her veins was all on fire with jealousy. As she reached the foot of Falling Spring, a canoe shot out from the ravine through which its waters plunged to the river. She saw the waves glitter in its track, sprang downward, unmoored her own little craft, and flew along the windings of the Susquehanna like a sparrow hawk.

CHAPTER XII
THE CHERRY-TREE SPRING

Mary Derwent returned home with a mournful determination to seek the confidence of her sister—to inform her frankly of the knowledge she had obtained, and, if possible, to save her from, the consequences of her unprincipled encouragement of Walter Butler, when her faith was pledged to another.

She found Edward Clark and her sister seated by the only glazed window of the cabin, conversing cordially as usual. But, as the evening wore on, she observed that Jane grew petulant and restless. Two or three times she went to the door, looked out hurriedly, and returned without any obvious reason. She would not sit down by Clark again, but when he addressed her, answered him impatiently, as if his society had all at once become irksome.

Once Edward made some allusion to a farm which his father had promised to give him when he settled for life, and spoke of the kind of house he intended to build, asking Jane’s opinion.

She answered abruptly that she was tired of farming and hard work of all kinds; indeed, she hoped the time would come when she need not be obliged to live in a log-house, and spoil her hands by washing dishes from morning till night.

Young Clark looked a little surprised at this sudden outbreak of discontent, but laughingly told the spoiled beauty that she should have a two-story frame house, with glass windows in every room when his ship came in from the moon, and the Indians were all driven from Wyoming.

Jane was about to return some saucy reply, but that instant a shrill whistle came up from the river, which brought a torrent of crimson into her face, and she looked wistfully at the door without daring to approach it.

Mary understood it all, and her pure heart ached within her. She blushed even more deeply than her sister; and when Jane attempted to speak carelessly of night birds which roosted on the island, her face grew troubled, like that of an angel who sees a beloved companion ready to fall.

Clark observed this embarrassment without suspecting its cause, while Mother Derwent droned on with her flax-wheel, and talked about the comfort of living upon an island where the wolves could only bark at you from the opposite shore, thus unconsciously aiding in her granddaughter’s deception.

After a time, Clark mentioned Walter Butler, and observed that he had seen him on the river that day; something in Jane’s manner seemed to excite his attention that moment, for he asked, a little suspiciously, if the young Tory had landed on the island.

Jane crimsoned to the temples again, but answered promptly, that she had not seen Mr. Butler in a week—that was, since her birthday.

This direct falsehood smote Mary to the heart; tears swelled to her eyes till she could hardly discern the beautiful face of her sister through the mist.

Filled with these unquiet thoughts, Mary went to her little bedroom, that she might weep and pray alone. As she closed the door, her sister was asking Edward Clark how far it was from Wyoming to Canada, and if all the handsome ladies there wore silk dresses and had hired people to wait on them?

Mary closed the door and went to bed, but she could not sleep; for the first time, the sweet voice of her sister, as it sounded through the thin partition, brought disquiet to her affectionate heart. She heard Edward Clark leave the house about ten o’clock, but it was more than an hour before Jane came to bed. When, at length, she felt the familiar touch of her cheek, it was heated with feverish thought. The deformed lay within her sister’s arms, apparently asleep, but deliberating on the most effectual method of opening the subject which lay so heavily on her heart, when that whistle which had haunted her footsteps continually since the night before again sounded from the cove with a shrillness that cut to her heart like a dagger.

Jane caught her breath, rose suddenly to her elbow, and listened, while her frame trembled till it shook the bed. After a few minutes, during which the whistle sounded sharply again, she crept softly from the bed, put on her clothes, and stole from the house. Mary was so shocked and confounded that it was several minutes before she could collect her thoughts sufficiently to decide what course to pursue. At last she arose, and hastily dressing herself, ran down to the cove.

The trees hung in leafy quiet over the green sward, and the moonbeams shed their radiance on the waters as they rippled against the bank; no human being was in sight, but a strange canoe lay rocking at its mooring by the side of her own, and the murmur of distant voices came faintly from the direction of a spring which supplied the household with water.

The moonlight lay full on the overhanging trees as Mary approached, and, in the stillness, the voices she had heard became each moment more distinct. She paused in the shadow which fell across the footpath where it curved down into the little hollow. Her sister. Jane, was sitting on a rock just within the moonlight, which flickered through the boughs above, and by her side, with her hand in his, was Walter Butler.

He was speaking, and Mary’s heart swelled with indignation as she listened to his words.

“Take your choice,” he said, “remain here and become the wife, the drudge, of Edward Clark—condemn these beautiful hands to perpetual toil; milk his cows, cook for his workmen, be content with the reward of a homespun dress, now and then, to set off this form, which a king might look upon with admiration; accept this miserable life if you choose. But do not pass by the offer I make, without thought; for it is wealth, ease, luxury, in fact everything that beauty craves, against neglect and drudgery. I offer the heart of a man who knows how to estimate your beauty—who will deck it in gold and robe it in silks—who will provide servants to do your bidding, and surround you with such elegance as you never dreamed of. It is no idle promise, Jane, for I have become rich, very rich, independent of my father. What are you crying for? can I offer more than this?”

“Oh, no,” replied the infatuated girl; “I was thinking of poor old grandma—dear, dear Mary; what will they do when I am gone—what will Edward Clark think of me?”

“Edward Clark again! and that old woman and selfish girl who have made you a slave. Will you never stop whimpering about them?—have I not promised that you shall send them money?”

“They would not take it; I am sure they would not touch a cent of your money. Indeed, I cannot help feeling bad when I think of leaving them in this manner. When we are married you will bring me back sometimes, won’t you?”

“Yes, when we are married I will certainly bring you to see them; have no fear of that. It is now past twelve, and we must be many miles hence before daybreak. Come, dry these tears and go with me to the canoe—we are losing time—what good is there in all these tears? they only spoil your beauty; come, come.”

As Butler spoke, he placed his arm round the weeping girl and drew her, with some violence, along the footpath; but they had scarcely reached the bend which led into the open moonlight when Mary Derwent stood in the way.

“The little Hunchback, by all the furies!” exclaimed Butler, girding the waist of his companion with a firm arm and attempting to drag her forward, though she struggled in his embrace, and with tears and sobs entreated him to free her.

“Jane—sister! you will not go with this wicked man; listen to me before you take this dreadful step! Ask him where he obtained the money which he but now boasted of. Jane, I have never, in the whole course of my life, told you a falsehood. Believe me now—this wicked man dares not deny what I say. He is another woman’s husband! I heard him make the promise—I saw him on his way to perform that promise! Jane, it is a married man for whom you were about to forsake us. Let him deny it if he dare.”

“Out of my path, lying imp! before I trample your shapeless carcass under my feet!” cried Butler, through his shut teeth.

But the undaunted girl kept her station, and her stately voice told how little effect his taunt on her deformity had made.

“I have told no lie,” she exclaimed boldly, “and you dare not accuse me of it. Last evening I heard all that passed between you and the strange white woman who lives among the Shawnees. Jane, look in that face. Is there no guilt there?”

“You do not believe this,” said Butler, still attempting to draw the wretched girl away.

“Yes, I do!” cried Jane, with sudden vehemence, and leaping from his grasp she flung her arms around Mary where she stood, and urged his departure with a degree of energy that he could no longer contend against. Baffled and full of rage, he loaded them both with bitter imprecations, and pushed out into the stream. Locked in each other’s arms, the sisters saw him depart; one shedding tears of penitence and shame, the other full of thanksgiving.

As they stood thus, unable to speak from excess of feeling, the young vines were torn apart just above them, a pair of glittering eyes looked through, and a voice that made them cling closer to each other broke upon the night, sharp and wild as the cry of an angry bird.

“Look up, that I may see the pale face that comes between Tahmeroo and her love!”

With a wild bound that tore the vines before her into shreds, Tahmeroo leaped down among the loose rocks, and seizing Jane Derwent by the shoulder, dragged her up the path into the moonlight; for the clouds that had tented her wedding with their gloom were swept away now, leaving the sky clear, full of stars, and pearly with the glow of a full moon.

Jane Derwent shrunk and cowered under those flashing eyes. She was forced to her knees among the stones, and held there, while Tahmeroo perused her face, lineament by lineament, as if it had been a book in which her own destiny was written. A fierce, angry fire burned in those black eyes, and that mouth, so beautiful when it smiled, writhed and trembled with terror, scorn, and bitter, bitter hate. She clutched her hand on the poor girl’s shoulder till its nails penetrated the skin; with the other hand she groped at her girdle, and drew a knife from its glittering sheath at her side; for this remnant of her savage dress she still retained.

Jane crouched down to the earth, shielding herself with both uplifted hands; her shrieks rang out, one upon another, till the opposite rocks echoed them back like demons.

This terror exasperated the young Indian to still keener madness. She drew back the knife with a force that lifted her clear of the form grovelling at her feet, the next instant it would have been buried in the white neck—but Mary Derwent sprang upon her, seized the uplifted arm and dragged it downward.

“Would you kill her? This is murder—she has never wronged you!”

Tahmeroo’s rage broke fearfully over the gentle girl as she clung to her arm; for one instant it seemed checked by the agony of that lovely face; but another cry from Jane brought the fury back; her eyes rained fire; she tore her arm from the grasp of those poor little hands; again the knife quivered on high—again she drew back to give a sure blow.

But a stronger arm than Mary’s grasped her now. The knife was torn from her with a force that sent her reeling down the bank—its blade flashed over her, struck with a sharp clink against the stones, rebounded and plunged into the spring, sending up a storm of diamonds as it fell.

“Tahmeroo—woman—squaw—how dare you touch this girl!”

Butler lifted Jane from the earth as he spoke, and holding her with one arm, thus confronted his young wife, as she rose from the stones-where he had dashed her.

She could not speak; her face was blanched; specks of foam settled on her marble lips; her eyes were lurid with smouldering fire, and all her limbs quivered like those of a dying animal.

At last her voice broke forth.

“You have struck Tahmeroo, and for her.”

“Tahmeroo—woman—squaw—how dare you touch this girl!” said Butler.

Something more than anger spoke in that voice—it had the dull hollow sound of desolation.

“Squaw—traitoress—half-breed!—go back to your wigwam before I lay you dead at the girl’s feet!”

The Indian girl withered under this fiendish speech; she fell forward, grovelling, with her face to the earth, and lay there like a drift of autumn leaves, through which the wind is moaning. Her lamentations broke forth in the Indian tongue, but the tones were enough to win tears from marble.

Mary Derwent knelt down and took the drooping head upon her lap; the anguish in that face as it was turned to the moonlight went to her gentle soul.

“Oh, me! you have killed her; cruel, cruel man!” she said, lifting her eyes to the lowering face of Butler, who was striving to reassure Jane Derwent, passing by the sufferings of his wife with reckless scorn. “She cannot speak; every breath is a moan.”

“Let her rest, then; no one wants her to speak, the young tigress! My poor Jane, the dagger was quivering over you when I came up. I shudder to think what might have happened but for your cries; had I been a little farther off, your cries could not have reached me, and I should have lost you eternally. Look up, dear one, now that I have saved your life it is mine, all mine.”

Tahmeroo evidently heard these words; she struggled to get up, but sank back again, moaning out: “No, no, Tahmeroo is his wife!”

“You hear,” said Mary Derwent, looking up at her sister, who, still trembling with terror, clung to young Butler with all her strength, and seemed soothed by his expressions of tender interest. “This poor girl is his wife, his cruel words are killing her. Leave his arms, sister; stand up alone, and look upon the woman you have both wronged, asking God to forgive you!”

“Come, come, with me now. Let the crooked little witch preach on. You are not safe here—the moment I leave you, this pretty fiend will find her knife again. She will not let you live a week. See how your sister tends her as if she, not you, had been hurt! Leave them together, sweet one; we can reach the canoe before they miss us. I shall leave Wyoming at once. Horses are ready for us down at Aunt Polly’s tavern; before daylight we shall reach the Blue Mountains.”

Butler whispered these words into Jane Derwent’s ear, drawing her down to his side as he spoke, and enforcing his entreaties with covert caresses.

Half overcome with terror, half with these entreaties, the unhappy girl yielded herself to the power of his arm, and they both fled towards the shore.

CHAPTER XIII
THE MERITED LESSON

Tahmeroo heard the movement, sprang to her feet, and away, almost throwing Mary down the steep, with her first impetuous leap.

Recovering from the shock, Mary followed her, calling desperately after her sister.

In his hurry to reach the spring, Butler had dragged his canoe half-way up the bank, and it took a few moments to shove it into the water again. Frightened and weak, Jane had seated herself on a loose boulder, and eagerly watched him as he tugged at the little craft. By this time Tahmeroo confronted her husband, dragged the canoe desperately from his hold, and with the strength of a lioness, sent it shooting into the river.

The canoe was out of reach in a moment—for the quick current seized it, and it was soon dancing down its own silver path on the “broken waters,” leaving the baffled villain and his victim helpless on the shore.

Butler ground his teeth. If he did not again load the poor Indian with rude epithets, it was from excess of rage. Tahmeroo was neither fierce nor weak now. The iron of her nature was taking its white heat; all the fiery sparks had been shot forth, but she was dangerous to trifle with just then, even without arms, and so still.

Mary was pleading with her sister.

“You are wronging her, degrading yourself—throwing away your good name forever,” she said. “The poor feeling he calls love was given to her once, and you see how he outrages her now. Even though he had the power to make you his wife, her fate would be yours, Jane.”

Jane turned her back upon the gentle pleader, repulsing her with both hands.

“That young Indian is not his wife, I say,” she answered petulantly, and weeping, as much from annoyance as any remorseful feeling. “It takes something more than a savage pow-pow in the woods to bind an officer of the king. What does it amount to if she does call herself his wife?”

“Nothing, nothing whatever,” said Butler, interposing, while Tahmeroo stood proudly silent. “Such contracts never last beyond the moon in which they are formed. If the Shawnee chief would insist on giving me his daughter, am I to blame? Such hospitality is a habit of his tribe.”

“And dare you say that this is all the bond which unites you with this poor girl?” questioned Mary, with great dignity.

“Dare I say that?—of course I dare. She knows it well enough—can you think me a fool?”

“Yes,” said a voice, which made the audacious young man start, “if cruelty and falsehood are folly, you are the worst of fools. How dare you stand up in the face of high Heaven and disclaim vows yet warm on your lips? Jane Derwent, for your father’s sake, believe me. This very evening I, invested with sacred power by the church, married Walter Butler to this young girl. He came from the Lodge, where this ceremony was performed, directly here. I was myself coming to the island, thinking to rest in your cabin till morning, but his arm was strongest and he reached the shore first.”

“You hear him—you will believe this now!” said Mary tenderly, leaning over her sister.

Jane began to sob.

“What is the difference, supposing he speaks the truth?” said Butler, also bending over her. “I love you, and have the means of performing all my promises. Who will know or care about this forest hawk in our world?”

Jane Derwent was weak and miserably vain, but not vicious. Butler had enlisted no really deep feeling in his behalf. Indeed, but for her terror of the Indian girl, it is doubtful if she would have followed him to the shore. She had been taught from childhood up to regard the missionary with reverence, and never for an instant dreamed of doubting his word. Arising with an angry gesture, she put Butler aside and submitted herself to the caressing arm of her sister.

“Go to your wife,” she said, with a burst of mortification. “She is only too good for you. I am sorry for her and despise you—a pretty creature you intended to make of me.”

“Not at all, my dear. It was the Lord that made you a pretty creature to begin with, or I should never have troubled my head about you. After all, I dare say the whole thing would have turned out more plague than pleasure.”

“Or profit, either,” said the missionary, with the nearest approach to sarcasm that his heavenly voice or features could express. “Remember, for the present, I am that poor girl’s trustee; wrong her by another word, and the draft upon Sir William Johnson shall be cancelled. Before morning I will deliver it back, with the casket of jewels in my bosom, to the lady whose munificence you have abused. Gold cannot re-kindle the love that would give happiness to this unfortunate child, but it shall save her from cruelty.”

“Upon my word, old gentleman, you should have been a lawyer; among that hive of red skins up yonder. I really thought praying your vocation, but you are rather hard upon my harmless enterprise. I only wanted to torment little hunchback here, who has been following me round like a wildcat the whole week; there was nothing serious in the matter, I assure you, upon the honor of a gentleman.”

The missionary regarded him for a moment in dead silence; the audacity of this falsehood was something new to him. It is probable he would have rebuked this coarse attempt at deception, but Tahmeroo came proudly up at the instant, and for her sake he refrained.

During this entire conversation the Indian bride had kept aloof, standing alone on the banks of the cove; as she moved towards them Butler’s last speech fell upon her ear. She drew a deep breath, and listened for more. The light shone full upon her face; it was pale, but very beautiful, with the new hope his words had aroused—her eyes shone like stars. All the spirit of her fathers lay in the movement of that slender form. With the elasticity of sudden hope she came back to her old life.

Butler was eager to retaliate upon Jane, to convince the missionary and appease his bride. With that quick transition of manner which rendered him almost irresistible at times, he met Tahmeroo half way.

“There,” he said, holding out both hands, “have I punished you enough, my fiery flamingo? Did you think I could not see that you were following my canoe all the time? But for that I should have been in the fort long ago; why, child, had it not been for my seeming wrath, you would have killed that silly girl yonder, and that would have set every patriot in the valley on your track.”

She stood looking at him, the haughtiness dropped away from her figure, and her lips began to tremble.

“Tahmeroo’s heart is like a white flower on the rocks; it opens to the rain, but folds itself close when thunder comes,” she said at last. “Speak again, that she may know how to answer.”

He knew that she was trembling from head to foot; that a passionate outbreak of forgiveness lay under those figurative words.

“What shall I say, Tahmeroo?—what is there to explain, where two people love each other as we do?”

She gave him her hand then—she gathered both his against her heart, that he might feel how loudly it was beating.

Butler cast a triumphant look on Jane. It pleased him that she witnessed the passionate love, the ready forgiveness, of that spirited young creature.

“Did you think, sir,” he said, leading his bride up to the missionary, “that any man could earnestly seek another while a being like this belonged to him?”

Poor Jane, she was no match for the audacity of this man, but fairly burst into tears of mortified vanity. It was a salutary lesson, which no one wished to render less impressive than it proved.

Tahmeroo stood by her husband in silence. All her sensitive modesty had returned, and she was restless, like a wild bird eager to get back to its cage.

The missionary did not reply. He seemed to have forgotten what had gone before, and stood mournfully gazing on that young face.

“God be thanked if I have saved her one pang,” he murmured, in answer to some thought that arose at the sight of her beauty.

But the young man became impatient.

“Tahmeroo waits to take leave of you, reverend sir. I trust this reckless escapade has done us no harm in your good opinion. The young lady there will tell you it was but a wild freak to annoy her sister, and to punish Tahmeroo a little for the jealousy which sent her off like a wild hawk upon the night. I trust you will not think it worth while to mention the affair to my august mother-in-law before we meet again in the valley of the Mohawk!”

“I understand,” answered the missionary briefly, “and inform you that the power to enforce the conditions of your marriage contract rests with me, so let the fact of your visiting this island remain among ourselves.”

“You are generous, sir,” answered Butler, covering the bitterness of his defeat under an appearance of grateful feeling. “Come, Tahmeroo, show me your craft, and I will take you back to the Ledge. My poor canoe is half-way to Wilkesbarre by this time, I dare say.”

He wound his arm around the young Indian exactly as he had supported Jane Derwent a few minutes before, passed by that astonished girl with a careless nod of the head, and in this fashion was about to leave the cove; but Tahmeroo disengaged herself from his arm, and came back with a wild grace that touched the missionary to the heart. She knelt down before him, and bent her head for a blessing, as she had bowed at his feet once before that night.

He did not touch her head; some unaccountable feeling kept him from that; but he lifted both hands to heaven and blessed her fervently. Tahmeroo arose, passed Jane quickly, and, taking Mary’s hand, with a look of ineffable gratitude laid it against her heart.

“When the war storm comes, Tahmeroo will remember the white bird.”

With a throb of affection, for which she could not account even to herself, Mary wound her arms around that bending neck, and drew the Indian girl close to her bosom. For an instant those two hearts beat against each other with full heavy throbs. When Mary unlocked her arms, it seemed as if a portion of her own life had been carried away, leaving her richer than ever.

Before she had time to wonder at this, Tahmeroo and her husband had disappeared.

Jane Derwent might well have trembled, had she known the vindictive feelings that man took away with him.

Mary Derwent arose early in the morning. She had not slept over night, but strove with many a gentle wile to soothe the indignant grief of her sister, and win for her the sleep that forsook her own eyelids. All night long she heard the missionary walking up and down the outer-room, with a sad, heavy step, as if some painful subject kept him from rest. At daybreak the front door closed, and his tread rose softly up from the green sward as he passed down to the water.

Mary stole out of bed and followed him. Jane had dropped asleep at last, and lay with the tears still trembling on her closed lashes and hot cheeks. Both anger and penitence for the time were hushed in slumber. Thus the deformed girl left the cabin unmolested, and overtook the missionary just as he was getting into his canoe.

“May I go with you?” she said, bending her sweet, troubled face upon him as he took up the oars.

“Why did you follow me, child?” he answered. “It is very early.”

“I do not know—I was awake all night—something told me to follow you. They are all asleep and will not miss me—please take me in. I want to feel the wind from the river—our room has been so close all night that I can’t breathe.”

The missionary grew thoughtful while she was speaking; but at last he smiled, and bade her step into the canoe. She placed herself at his feet, sighing gently, as if some pain had left her heart.

“Is it far?” she asked, looking up stream toward Campbell’s Ledge.

The missionary had told her nothing of his object; but he answered as if there had been some previous appointment between them.

“Last night they were encamped under the Ledge.”

“And you will tell this white queen what happened—you will keep that bad man away from Monockonok?”

“It is for this I seek the camp; but why did you follow me?—how did you guess where I was going?”

“I don’t know. That strange lady never spoke to me—never saw me in all her life; but I want to look at her again. She seemed standing by the bed all last night, asking me not to sleep. Sometimes I could almost see her crimson feathers wave and hear the wampum fringes rattle on her moccasins. I think that no shadow was ever so real before.”

“And it was this strange fancy that sent you out so early?”

“Yes, for it was a fancy. I could see, as the day broke, that grandmother’s crimson cardinal, which hung again the wall, had flung its shadow downward; but the idea of that strange lady had sunk into my heart before the light told me what it was. I longed to hear her voice again, to see her with the sunlight quivering about her head. Indeed, sir, she was like a queen standing there upon the rock. I caught my breath every time she spoke.”

“And yet she did not speak to you?”

“No; I was out of sight, behind the brushwood. She did not know that a poor creature like me existed—how should she?”

The missionary bent heavily to his oars; drops of perspiration rose to his forehead; he beat the water with heavy, desperate pulls; but it was long before he answered.

They landed at Falling Spring, and made their way into the hills. A trail was broken through the undergrowth, where the Indians had passed up to the ledge the night before. Here and there a blackened pine-torch lay in the path, and fragments of rude finery clung to the thorn bushes.

The missionary moved on, buried in thought. Mary followed after, panting for breath, but unwilling to lag behind. At last he noticed that she mounted the hill with pain, and began to reproach himself, tenderly helping her forward. She saw that he grew pale with each advancing step, and that his hand hung nervously as he took hers, in the ascent. Why, she could not think. Surely he did not fear the savages then, after having stood in their midst the night before.

At last they came out upon a pile of rocks that overlooked the encampment. The whole basin, so full of savage life ten hours before, lay empty at their feet; not a human being was in sight; trampled grass, extinguished torches, and torn vines betrayed a scene of silent devastation. In the midst of it all stood Catharine Montour’s lodge, drearily empty. The bear-skin was torn down from the entrance; the rich furs that had lined it were all removed; it was a heap of bare logs, through which the morning winds went whispering—nothing more.

The missionary and Mary Derwent looked wistfully in each other’s faces; a dead feeling of disappointment settled upon them both.

“They are gone,” he said, looking vaguely around; “gone without a sign; we are too late, Mary.”

“It is dreary,” said the deformed, seating herself on the threshold of Catharine’s lodge; “I had so hoped to find the white lady here.”

All at once she shaded her eyes with one hand, looking steadily westward.

“See! see!”

“What, my child?”

Far off, up the banks of the Susquehanna, she saw glimpses of moving crimson and warm russet breaking the green of the forest. The missionary searched the distance, and saw those living masses also.

“It is the whole tribe in motion—another dream vanishing away,” he said, following the train with a look of indescribable sadness. “Let us descend, Mary; this is not God’s time, but it will come.”

Mary sat upon a fragment of rock, gazing up the river, with a feeling of keen disappointment; she had hoped to see that stately white woman again, and to have said one more kindly word to the young Indian bride; but there was no chance of that left. Even as she gazed, those living waves swept over a curve of the hills, and were lost in the green west. The girl sighed heavily, and stood up to go.

They went silently down the mountain together, and then as silently floated with the current of the river till their little shallop once more shot into the cove at Monockonok Island.

Jane was still asleep when her sister entered their little room; but an angry frown gathered on her face, and she muttered discontentedly as Mary strove to arouse her. When they came forth, Mother Derwent had the breakfast ready, waiting before the kitchen fire. The spider was turned up before a bed of coals, and the johnnycake within rose round and golden to the heat; a platter of venison steaks stood ready on the hearth, and the potatoes she was slicing into the hot gravy which they had left in the long-handled frying-pan hissed and browned over the fire, while the old lady stood, with the handle in one hand and a dripping knife in the other, waiting for the family to assemble around the little pine table set out so daintily in the centre of the kitchen.

Jane came from her room sullen and angry. The old lady was a little cross because no one had volunteered to help her get breakfast, and, as the best of women in those olden times would, scolded generally as she proceeded with her work.

“It was very strange,” she said, “what had come over the young people of that day—the smartness had all gone out of them. When she was a girl, things were different—children were brought up to be useful then. They never thought of having parties, and dressing in chintz dresses—not they. An apple-cut or a log-rolling once a year, was amusement enough. True, some families did get up an extra husking, or quilting frolic, but when such excessive dissipation crept into a neighborhood, the minister took it up in his pulpit, and the sin was handled without mittens.”

Jane sat down by the window, moody and restless. At another time the old granddame might have croned on with her complaints, and the girl would scarcely have heard them, she was so used to this eternal exaltation of the past over the present, which always has been, and always will be, a pleasant recreation for old ladies; but now Jane was fractious, and disposed to take offense at everything; so she broke into these running complaints with a violent burst of weeping, which startled the old dame till she almost dropped the frying-pan. The dear soul was quite unconscious that she had been scolding all the morning, and Jane’s injured looks startled her.

“Are you sick, Janey dear?” she inquired kindly.

“No, Janey was not sick—but she wished she was dead—that she had never been born—in short, she didn’t know what people were born for at all, especially girls that couldn’t help being good-looking, and that nobody would let alone. If she had only been laid by her dear, dear father under the cedar trees the whole world wouldn’t have been bent on persecuting her, especially her grandmother!”

This touched the old lady’s heart to the centre. She forgot to stir the potatoes, and let them brown to a crisp in the pan. Indeed, she went so far as to rest that long handle on the back of a chair, and forsook her post altogether.

“Why, Janey, what is all this about, dear? Grandma wasn’t scolding you, only talking to herself in a promiscuous way about things in general. Don’t cry so—that’s a darling. Come, now, grandma will get you something nice for breakfast—some preserved plums.”

“No, Jane had no desire for preserved plums; she only wanted to die; it was a cruel world, and she didn’t care, for her part, how soon she was out of it. Everybody was set against her. Mary did nothing but find fault, and as for Edward Clark—well, of course, some one would be slandering her to him next. The missionary himself might do it—ministers always must be meddling with other people’s business. She shouldn’t be surprised if Clark were even to believe that she didn’t care for him, but was disappointed that Captain Butler had demeaned himself into marrying that little good-for-nothing squaw, who had been chasing after him so long. In fact, such was her own opinion of human nature—she shouldn’t be astonished at anything, not even if the missionary, who had more silver on his head than he would ever get into his pocket, should fall in love with Mary.”

At this, Grandma was horrified. How could Jane think of anything so dreadful?—but then, poor child, she was out of temper, and said whatever came uppermost—of course, it meant nothing, and Jane must not think she was scolding again—nothing of the sort.

But Jane did think grandma was scolding. Perhaps it was right that she, a poor orphan, who had only one dear grandmother in the wide, wide world should have that grandmother set against her. This was her destiny, she supposed, and submission was her duty; she only hoped nobody would be sorry for it after she was dead and gone, that was all.

How long Jane Derwent might have kept up this state of martyrdom it is difficult to say, but just as she was indulging in another outbreak of sorrowful self-compassion, Mary came up from the cove, looking pale and concerned. She had been to call the missionary to breakfast, and found him bailing out his canoe, ready to start from the island. He had spoken few words in leaving, but the hands which touched her forehead, as he blessed her, were cold as ice. She felt the chill of that benediction, holy as it was, at her heart yet; the sorrow upon her face startled Jane into a little natural feeling. She forgot to torment that kind old woman, and condescended to approach the breakfast table without more tears.

“Where is the minister?—why don’t he come to breakfast?” inquired Mrs. Derwent, looking ruefully at the crisp little pile of potatoes left in the frying-pan. “I’ve had the table sot out a hull hour, and now everything is done to death. I wonder what on earth has come over you all!”

“The minister has gone away,” answered Mary, and the tears welled into her eyes as she spoke.

“Gone away! marcy on us! and without a mouthful of breakfast. Why, gals! what have you been a-doing to him? He ain’t mad nor nothing, is he?”

Mary smiled through her tears. The very idea of petty anger connected with the missionary seemed strange to her.

“Oh, grandma, he is never angry,” she said; “but he seems anxious and troubled about something.”

“Worried to death by them Injuns, I dare say,” muttered the granddame, with a shake of the head that made her cap-borders tremble around the withered face. “They’ll scalp him one of these days, for all the pains he takes.”

“No, no; they love him too well—you don’t really think this, grandma,” cried Mary, turning pale with sudden terror.

“Well, no; I suppose he stands as good a chance as the rest of us; but that isn’t saying over-much, for I tell you what, gals! there’ll be squally times in the valley afore another year goes over our heads, or I lose my guess. All these ’ere forts and stockades ain’t being built for nothing.”

Jane started up in affright. “You don’t think they mean to attack us at once?—that they are camping under the ledge in order to pounce upon us unawares, do you, grandma? Oh, I wish I was away! I wish I’d gone while there was a chance! They’ll scalp me the very first one—I can almost feel that horrid Indian girl’s knife in my hair!”

“Don’t fear,” said Mary; “they have left Campbell’s Ledge. I was up there at daylight, and found the camp empty.”

“You up there at daylight, Mary? What for?” cried Jane, flushing with angry surprise. “Who did you go to see?”

“I went with the missionary.”

“And who was he after, I should like to know?”

“I believe, Jane he wished to speak with the young girl whom he married to Walter Butler last night, and perhaps to her mother, the strange white lady, also.”

“And what about?—what business has that man with Walter Butler’s affairs? I should think he’d meddled enough already,” cried the angry beauty.

“It was not Butler, but his wife whom the minister went in search of.”

“His wife!” cried Jane, with a magnificent curve of the lip, and a lift of the head that Juno might have envied. “What does an Indian wife amount to in the law?”

“A great deal, if she has been married by the law.”

“But I don’t believe one word of that; Butler isn’t such a fool; he only said it to torment me, to—to—”

Jane lost herself here, for the keen look which Grandmother Derwent turned upon her brought caution with it.

“Well, gals, what on earth are you talking about? I don’t want the name of that Tory captain mentioned under my cabin roof. His place is with the Wintermoots, the Van Garders, and Van Alstyns—birds of a feather flock together. While I live, the man that makes himself friends with the off-scouring from York State had better keep clear of Monockonok Island.”

Jane bit her lips with vexation, but she said nothing; for when the old woman waxed patriotic there was no opposing her, and even the beautiful favorite feared to urge the conversation farther.

Mother Derwent stepped to the door, and shading her eyes with one hand, looked up and down the river. Her kind old heart was distressed at the idea of the missionary going away without his breakfast. She saw his canoe at last gliding along the opposite shore and turned briskly around.

“There he is, neither out of sight nor hearing yet. Mary, run upstairs and shake a white cloth out of the garret window. You, Jane, bring me the tin dinner-horn. I’ll give him a blast that shall bring him back, depend on’t.”

Mary ran to make the signal, and Jane took down a long tin dinner-horn from behind the door, which Mother Derwin blew vigorously, rising on tiptoe, and sending blast after blast upon the water, as if she had been summoning an army. The missionary heard the sound, and saw Mary with her white signal at the window. He waved his hand two or three times, sat down again, and directly disappeared in a bend of the shore.

Mary watched him with a heavy heart. It seemed as his canoe was lost to her sight that half her life had departed forever, and he, looking mournfully back, saw the snowy signal floating from the window, with a gush of tender sorrow. It was like the wing of an angel unfurling itself with vain efforts to follow him.

CHAPTER XIV
AUNT POLLY CARTER

But old Mother Derwent was not altogether disappointed. As if answering the blast of her horn a female appeared on the opposite shore, signalizing for a boat with great vigor. Mary could only see that the woman wore a short scarlet cloak, and that the brilliant cotton handkerchief flaunting so impatiently was large enough for a sail to any craft on the river.

Jane had withdrawn sulkily into the bedroom. She was by no means pleased with the efforts her grandmother was making to bring the missionary back; in her heart she was beginning to detest the good man.

When Mary came down and saw there was no one else to answer the stranger’s signal, she went at once to unmoor her pretty canoe, and was soon across the river.

“Oh, is it you, my pet?” cried a cordial voice, as she neared the shore. “I thought mebby Jane would be on hand to row me across. Is grandmarm to hum, and how’s your sister? Purty well, I hope?”

Mary’s face brightened. The visitor was Aunt Polly from the Elm-tree tavern on the Kingston shore, a welcome guest at any house from Wilkesbarre to the Lackawanna gap, but a woman who seldom, left the shelter of her own roof, and her presence so far from her home might well be a matter of wonder.

“Why, Aunt Polly, is it you? How glad grandma will be,” said Mary, looking up from her seat in the canoe with pleasure in her eyes.

“Yes, it’s me sure enough, safe and sound. I’ll just take the bits out of Gineral Washington’s mouth, and let him crop a bite of grass while I go over and say how-do-you-do to grandma. See how the old feller eyes that thick grass with the vilets in it! There, old chap, go at it.”

As she spoke, the old maid went up to a huge farm horse, cumbered with a saddle much too narrow for his back, which bore unmistakable evidence of its Connecticut origin; for the horns curved in like those of a vicious cow, and the stirrups were so short that a tall rider, like Aunt Polly, was compelled to double her limbs up till they formed a letter A under her calico skirt whenever General Washington had the honor of carrying her in state upon the wonderful mechanism of that side-saddle, which was the pride and glory of her house.

“There, now,” she said, unbuckling the throat-latch, and slipping the bridle, bits and all, around General Washington’s stumpy neck, which she patted with great affection. “Go in for a feed, and no mistake, Gineral; only keep to the bank, and, mind you, don’t roll on that saddle—it couldn’t be matched on this side the Green Mountains, I tell you, now.”

General Washington seemed to understand all this perfectly, for he gave his great lumbering head a toss which signified plainer than words that he understood the value of that saddle quite as well as his mistress, and knew how to keep his peace, if it came to that, without being lectured about it. He whinnied out his satisfaction, in answer to Aunt Polly’s caresses, and trotted off with great dignity toward a little rivulet on the bank, where the grass was green as emeralds, and the violets blue as a baby’s eyes.

“There,” said Aunt Polly, looking after him as he rolled heavily along, with the flesh quivering like a jelly under his sleek hide, “isn’t he a picterful sight? Why, Mary dear, that hoss knows more than two-thirds of the men in Wyoming. Now, that saddle is jest as safe on his back as if it was hung up by the stirrup in my kitchen—he’s a wonderful critter, is Gineral Washington.”

With her head half turned back, in proud admiration of her steed, Aunt Polly let herself down the bank, talking all the time, and at last sat down in the bottom of the canoe, gathering her scarlet cloak around her, and covering her ankles decorously with the skirt of her striped dress. Then, with a gentle dip of the oars, Mary headed her little craft for the island.

Mother Derwent was both pleased at and annoyed by the sight of her visitor—pleased, because Aunt Polly Carter was born in the same old Connecticut town with herself; and annoyed, that she, the very best cook and housekeeper in Wyoming, should find a spoiled breakfast on the hearth—potatoes browned into chips, venison steaks with all the gravy dried up, and the johnnycake overdone. It was a terrible humiliation, and Mother Derwent felt as if she had been detected in some shameful act of negligence by her old friend of the Elm-tree tavern.

“Just in time,” exclaimed Aunt Polly, taking off her cloak and untying her bonnet; “I was afraid breakfast ’ed be over afore I got here. Gracious goodness! Miss Derwent, don’t you see that johnnycake’s burnt to a crisp?—here, give it to me—half cold too, dear, dear—never mind, good soul! it might a-been worse—there, take it this way, and beat it between both hands a trifle—oh, that tea smells something like, oh, ha—you haven’t forgot to cook a meal of victuals yet; you and I can give these Pennsylvanians a lesson any day, Miss Derwent.”

Grandma explained how the breakfast had been kept waiting till it was quite spoiled; but Aunt Polly would listen to nothing of the kind—everything was excellent, the tea drawn beautifully, and the butter perfection. As for the preserved plums and crab-apples, she had tasted nothing equal to them in years; they had the real Connecticut flavor—quite put her in mind of old times.

They had all been seated at the table some minutes before Jane made her appearance. She was still moody, and received Aunt Polly with distrustful reserve, which the good lady did not seem to regard in the least, but went on with her breakfast, tranquil as a summer’s day.

After they arose from the table there was a world of questions to ask, and experiments to try. Aunt Polly took pride in exhibiting all her accomplishments before the young girls. She sat down at the flax-wheel, arranged the threads in the flyers, and directly the whole cabin was filled with their hum.

“Look here, girls, and see how an old housekeeper can spin. Why, long before I was your age I had yards and yards of homespun linen out in father’s spring meadow, whitening for my setting out. I’ve got a great chest full of that ’ere identical linen in my house this minute, that’s never been used, and never will be till I’m settled for life.”

Now, as Aunt Polly was a middle-aged woman when she left Connecticut, and had lived at the Elm-tree tavern twenty-five years, this idea of settling for life-which, of course, comprised a husband, who might also be landlord to that establishment—struck the young girls at once as so improbable that they both smiled.

Aunt Polly knew nothing of this, but kept spinning on—tread, tread, tread—now dipping her fingers in the dried shell of a mock-orange, that hung full of water to the distaff, and daintily moistening the flax as it ran through them—now stopping to change the thread on her flyer, and off again—hum—hum—with a smile of self-satisfaction that was pleasant to behold.

After this little display, the good landlady tried her hand at the loom, where a linen web was in progress of completion; but finding the quill-box empty, she called out with her cheerful voice for Jane to come and wind some quills, for she was dying to try her hand at the shuttle, if it was only to show them how things were done when she was a girl.

Jane could not altogether resist this good humor; still she came forward, half pouting, dragged the lumbering old swifts out from under the loom, banded her quill wheel, and soon supplied the empty shuttle, which Aunt Polly was so impatient to use.

Now there was a clatter indeed; the treadles rose and fell with grating moans beneath those resolute feet; the rude gearing shrieked on its pulleys; the shuttle flew in and out, now darting into the weaver’s right hand—now into the left, while the lathe banged away, and the old loom trembled in all its timbers.

“That’s right—look on, girls,” cried the old maid with enthusiasm. “It’ll be a good while, I reckon, before either of you can come up to this; but ‘live and learn’ is a good saying. Your grandmother and I’ve seen the time when we broke more threads with awkward throws than we knew how to mend with two thumbs and eight fingers. Just see this shuttle fly—isn’t it beautiful? Oh, girls, there’s nothing like work—it keeps the body healthy, and the soul out of mischief. Wind away, Janey, it’ll do you lots of good; we’ll keep at it till Miss Derwent has washed up the morning dishes; an extra yard’ll help her along wonderfully—that’s the music—keep the old wheel a-going—more quills—more quills!”

Jane took a double handful of quills from her lap and brought them to the loom. While Aunt Polly was putting one in her shuttle, she looked keenly in the young girl’s face, shook her head, and went to work again more vigorously than before. Mary saw this, and was satisfied that the old maid had some deeper object in her visit than these experiments with her grandmother’s wheel and loom.

But Aunt Polly went on with her work, becoming more and more excited with every fling of the shuttle. She let out her web and rolled her cloth-beam eight or nine times before her enthusiasm began to flag.

“There,” she said at last, laying the empty shuttle daintily upon the cloth she had woven, and forcing herself out from the slanting seat, “if anybody wants an evener yard of cloth than that, let them weave it, I say. Now, Janey, come and show me your garden, and let’s see if it’s as forward as mine. I’ve had lettuce and peppergrass up this week.”

Aunt Polly strode toward the door as she spoke, and Jane followed her.

“Now,” said the old maid, facing round as they reached the garden, “you needn’t suppose that I took Gineral Washington from the plough, and come up to Monockonok just to see you all. I should have waited till after planting-time for that; but I heard something last night that worried me more than a little, and I want to know what it means, for we marriageable females ought to stand by each other. How comes it, Jane Derwent, that the young men in my bar-room talk about you with their loose tongues, and dare to drink your health in glasses of corn whiskey which they sometimes forget to pay for?”

“Who has done this?” questioned Jane, firing up, “and if they have how can I help it?”

“I’ll tell you how it was, Jane Derwent. Last night, nigh on to morning, Walter Butler and young Wintermoot, with three or four other rank Tories from the fort, came to my house, banging away at the door for us to get up and give them something to drink. Now, I hate these young fellers worse than pison, but one can’t keep tavern and private house at the same time when a sign swings agin your door; any loafer has a right to call you out of bed when he pleases. Well, they knocked and hammered till I woke up the bar-keeper, and sent him down with orders to make their sling weak, and get rid of them the minute he could; but, mercy on us, gal, they had come down the river like a flock of wolves, and was just as easy to pacify. The amount of whiskey they drank among them in less than an hour no one would believe that hadn’t seen it. There was nothing but a board partition between me and the bar-room; so I heard every word they said, and considering that I was a respectable female that might be called upon to accept an offer of marriage any day, their conversation was not exactly what it should have been.”

“And they mentioned me—you said that?”

“Mentioned you? I should say they did—Butler, Wintermoot, and all the rest of em. I declare it made my blood bile to hear the language they used.”

“Will you tell me what it was, Aunt Polly—me, and no one else, for I would not have grandma and Mary know it for the world?”

“Yes—that is what I came for. Young Wintermoot began first—teasing Butler because he’d tried to run away with you, and had to give it up after you’d both started, when a little hunchback and a sneak of a minister said he mustn’t. These were his exact words. Then another set in and wanted to drink success to the next time in bumpers of hot toddy. Directly there was a crash of glasses and a shout, and in all the noise I heard your name over and over. Some were laughing; some said you were a beauty and no mistake, while Butler talked loudest, and said he was sure to get you away from the hunchback yet, spite of all your pride and ridiculous nonsense.”

“He said that, did he?” cried Jane, biting her lips with silent rage.

“Yes, he said that, and more, yet. When one of the fellows asked what the pretty squaw would do, he laughed, and answered, as well as he could for hiccuping, that after he’d got some money that he expected from Sir John Johnson, she might go to Amsterdam, or where she could find more fire and less water, for all he cared. Then he went on telling how he had left her in the woods above Falling Spring, only a few hours before, crying like a baby because he would not stay and tramp back to Seneca Lake with her tribe.

“The young Tories received all this with bursts of laughter, joking about his squaw wife, and telling him what a fool he was to let you go when once a’most off. They said it was clear enough you didn’t want to go with him, that he’d got the mitten straight out, because you liked Edward Clark better than him, and so he had married the squaw out of spite.

“That set him to swearing like a trooper; he said there wasn’t a word of truth in it, that you were crazy in love with him, and would follow him like a dog to the ends of the earth, wife or no wife, if you could only escape from the island, and no one the wiser—more, he said that he left you crying your eyes out that very night because he went off with the Indian girl instead of you.”

“It was false—there was not a word of truth in it, Aunt Polly. I hope I may drop down dead in my tracks if there was,” cried Jane, trembling with rage and shame. “I was glad to see him go; Mary can tell you as much.”

“Then you have seen him?” questioned Aunt Polly—“then he was on the island last night, as he said?”

“I can’t help his coming to the island, Aunt Polly; every one comes here who has a boat, if he pleases; but I can say nobody wanted Walter Butler. He’s been a-visiting the Wintermoots off and on for three or four months. I invited him and the Wintermoots to my birthday party, and was a fool for my pains; but as for liking him, the Tory, the young outcast, I—I——”

Here Jane burst into a torrent of angry tears. Aunt Polly began to dry up this sorrow tenderly with her great cotton handkerchief, which seemed large enough to block up a mill-sluice.

“Don’t cry, Janey, don’t cry, that’s a dear. There, there, I shan’t tell anybody but yourself about the scamp’s boasting, not even Edward, though his father is my cousin.”

“No, don’t, Aunt Polly, don’t tell him, of all people in the world.”

“Why—why, Janey dear? How red you are! Tell me, you and Edward ain’t keeping company, nor nothing, are you?”

“Yes, we are, Aunt Polly, and have been this ever so long. He would kill that hateful villain if he knew half that he said at your house last night.”

“But he shan’t know it, child; you, and I, and Mary will settle that affair amongst ourselves, to say nothing of grandma, who would be worth us all if it came to a running scold.”

“Don’t—don’t say a word to Mary or grandma,” cried Jane, in breathless fear; “but you have not told me all yet.”

“No, Jane; what is to come makes the old Connecticut blood bile in my veins. I swan to man! it was all I could do to keep from jumping out of bed, and going in amongst them, when they sot down, and made up a plot to carry you off—them young Wintermoots was to do it, and meet Butler in the Blue Mountains after he’d got a heap of money that he expected from Sir John Johnson. I suppose that’s the son of Sir William Johnson, the old reprobate who had so many Injun wives in the Mohawk Valley, as if one wife wasn’t enough for any man in a new country where women folks are scarce. Well, as I was a-saying, Butler told ’em to go over to the island some night, and whistle like that—here he sent a long whistle through the partition that made me e’en a’most start up in bed, and the young Wintermoots practised on it like schoolboys learning their a-b-abs till they filled the hull house like a nest of blackbirds and brown thrashers.

“Butler told ’em that you’d spring out of bed like a hawk from its nest the moment you heard that, and if they only flattered you a little, and told you for earnest that he didn’t care a king’s farthing for the Indian girl, and wasn’t married to her, only Indian fashion, you’d be off with them, and glad enough to go.”

“He did, ha? he thinks I’ll follow him. Never mind, Aunt Polly. Let him come—let them whistle. Oh, how I wish I was a man.”

“Yes,” said Aunt Polly, thoughtfully, “men have their privileges. It’s something to be able to knock a chap down when he deserves it, and then, agin, when a man’s heart is full he can speak out, and not let his feelings curdle like sour milk in a pan. Yes, Janey, I think it would be pleasant if some of us could be men once in a while; but human nature is human nature, and it ain’t to be expected.”

“And this was all these wicked men said?” questioned Jane, who had lost half this speech in her own bitter thoughts.

“Yes, for when their plot was laid, they left the house. I peeped through the window, holding the valance close, that they could not see my nightcap, you know, and watched them shake hands before Butler mounted his horse. He rode off down stream, and the other fellers turned up the road towards Wintermoot’s Fort.”

“And this was all?”

“All that belongs to you; but now I’ve a word to say to Mary; by that time Gineral Washington will be tired of cropping vilets, I reckon, and we’ll be jogging down stream again.”

“Mary! what can you want with Mary?—not to tell her——”

“By no manner of means, Janey. If you want anybody else to help you, arter what I’ve told about these chaps, the truth is, you ain’t worth helping anyhow. A gal that can’t take care of herself when once warned, wouldn’t be kept back from ruin if a hull meeting-houseful of jest sich angels as our precious Mary was standing in the way. No, I don’t mean to torment that heavenly critter with any sich wickedness; but yet I’ve got a few words to say to her, and you’ll oblige me by going to the cabin and sending her out here at onst.”

Jane was glad to obey. This interview with the old maid had not been so pleasant that she wished to prolong it; so she went and summoned Mary.

That gentle girl went into the garden a little anxious, for the excitement of the last night had found its reaction, and she was ready to tremble at the fall of a leaf.

The change that had come over Aunt Polly was a beautiful proof of the influence of a character like that of Mary Derwent. With Jane the old maid had been peremptory and dictatorial, feeling very little respect for the wayward girl—she expressed none; but for Mary her heart was filled with a world of tender reverence. She touched her daintily, as she would have plucked a snowdrop, and spoke to her in a low, earnest voice, such as she would have used in prayer, had she been much inclined to devotion.

“Mary,” she said, laying one hard hand lightly on the maiden’s shoulder, “a strange thing happened to me this morning. As Gineral Washington and I was on our way up stream, a woman came out from the beach-woods on the flats, and stopped right in the road, afore that knowing animal and me, as if she wanted to say something; but she didn’t speak, and the Gineral sort o’ shied at fust, for the red dress, all glittering with wampum, was enough to scare any hoss.”

“Had she a scarlet dress on, a crown of feathers around her head, and a glittering snake twisted in her hair?” inquired Mary, quickly.

“That’s her to a T. I shall never forget the sharp, red eyes of that sarpent; a live rattlesnake couldn’t have eyed the Gineral and I more fiercely. I waited a minute, to give the woman a chance, if she wanted to speak, but she was searching my face with her eyes, as if she wanted to look me through afore she opened her lips. I was a’most tempted to up whip and ride straight over her; but the Gineral seemed to have his own idee—not a huff would he lift. I shook the bridle like all-possessed, and chirruped him along, as if he’d been a nussing baby; but there he stood stock-still in the road, a-eyeing the strange woman jest as independent as she was eyeing him and me.”

“And did she say nothing?”

“By-an’-by she spoke, and though it was afore sunrise, it seemed as if a bust of light broke over her face, it lit up so.

“‘Can you tell me,’ she said, ‘where I can find a small island that lies in the river about here? I have passed one or two, but there are no houses on ’em, and the one I want has a cabin somewhere near the shore.’

“‘Maybe you want Monockonok,’ says I, ‘where old Miss Derwent lives?’

“‘Yes,’ says she, ‘that is the island and Derwent is the name. She has two daughters, I believe.’

“‘Two granddaughters,’ says I.

“‘Granddaughters, are they? And de you know these girls?’ says she.

“‘Well, yes, I reckon so,’ says I, ‘and mighty smart gals they are. Jane’s a beauty, without paint or whitewash, I can tell you; and as for Mary——’ But no matter what I said about you, my dear; it wasn’t all you deserved, but——”

“No matter—oh, there was no need of saying anything about me,” murmured the deformed, shrinking within herself, as she always did when her person was alluded to.

Aunt Polly paused abruptly, and began to whip a sweet-briar bush near her with great vigor. She had but a vague idea of all the keen sensitiveness her words had disturbed, but that was sufficient; her rough, kind heart was troubled at the very idea of giving pain to that gentle girl.

“Well, I only said if ever there was an angel on earth, you was one; but I’m sorry as can be, now; I wouldn’t ’a’ said so for the world if I’d thought you didn’t like it,” pleaded the old maid with deprecating meekness. “You know, Mary Derwent, I always thought you was the salt of the ’arth—that’s the worst I will say of you any how, like it or not.”

“But the woman, Aunt Polly—the strange lady with that living serpent around her head—what did she want of Jane and me?” inquired Mary, keenly interested in the subject. “What could she mean by inquiring about grandmother?”

“Not knowing, can’t tell, Miss Mary. She fell to thinking, with her hand up to her forehead—a purty hand it was, too—afore I’d done talking; at last says she:

“‘That is the one I wish to speak with.’

“‘Which,’ says I, ‘Miss Jane?’

“‘No,’ says she, ‘the golden-haired one that you’ve been telling me about.’

“‘Well,’ says I, ‘what of her, marm;? I’m just a-going over to Monockonok, and can show you the way, if you want to see her.’

“‘No, not just now,’ says she, ‘I’ve something else to attend to first; but if you see this girl, tell her to meet me, near sunset, at the spring where she went so late last night—she will understand you.’

“‘Well,’ says I, ‘if I may be so bold, what do you want with Mary Derwent?’

“‘I wish to speak with her,’ says she, with a wave of her hand that made Gineral Washington back off sideways; ‘only give my message, good woman, and here’s a guinea for you.’

“Here she took a piece of gold from her pocket, and held it out.”

“But you did not take it, Aunt Polly?”

“Didn’t take it! trust me for letting a bright golden guinea slip through these fingers when it can be honestly come by—of course I took it.”

Here Aunt Polly drew forth a shot-bag from her enormous pocket, untied the towstring, and exhibited a quantity of silver and huge copper pennies, and from among them, daintily folded in a dry maple-leaf, she took a bright piece of gold.

“There it is, harnsome as a yaller bird,” she cried exultingly. “Look at it, Mary—I don’t mind your holding it a minute or so in your hand. I’d like to see any woman in Wyoming match that!”

“I never saw a golden guinea before,” said Mary, scanning the coin with innocent curiosity. “It is very beautiful; but somehow, Aunt Polly, I can’t help wishing you hadn’t taken it.”

“Well, if you think so,” said the old maid, eyeing the gold with a rueful look, “if you really think so, Mary Derwent, jest give it back to the lady when she comes. I don’t want to be mean, nor nothing, but—but—no, give it here—I can stand a good deal, but as for giving up money when it’s once been in my puss, that’s too much for human nature to put up with.”

She snatched eagerly at the gold, and, with a grim smile upon her mouth, and a flush about her eyes, hustled it back into her shot-bag, tied the strings with a jerk, and crowded the treasure down into the depths of her pocket, uttering only a few grim words in the energetic operation.

“There now—I’d like to see anybody strong enough to get that ’ere money-puss out of this ’ere pocket, that’s all!”

Mary felt how impossible it was for the old maid to release her hold on money, when she once got it in her grasp; so with a faint smile, which made the stingy old soul flush about the eyes once more, she turned the subject.

“At sunset, did you say, Aunt Polly?”

“Yes, at sunset to-night, and you wasn’t to fail—I promised that much.”

“Can I tell Jane or grandmother?” inquired Mary, thoughtfully.

“Not on no account. The lady—for anybody that dressed up like that, with a pocket full of gold, must be a lady, anyhow you fix it—the lady—says she: ‘Tell Mary Derwent to come alone,’ and, says I, ‘she shall, if my name’s Polly Carter.’ When my word is giv, it’s giv—so you must go down to the spring all alone, jest at sundown, Mary Derwent.”

“Yes, I’ll go,” said Mary, looking wistfully into the distance; “of course, I’ll go.”

“That’s a good gal—I was sure you would. Now, I’ll jest say good-by to Miss Derwent, and Gineral Washington and I will make tracks for home.”

Aunt Polly strode away up the garden, muttering to herself:

“Wal, I’ve killed two birds with one stone, and catch’d a goldfinch to boot. That ’ere side-saddle wasn’t mounted for nothing. If vartue al’es gets rewarded in this way, I’ll keep Gineral Washington a-going.”

These muttered thoughts brought the old maid up to the cabin, and she called out from the threshold:

“Jane, remember what I was a-saying, now do. When will you all come and take tea with me? Shall be proper glad to see you any time—the sooner the better. Good-bye, Miss Derwent; good-bye all.”

Here Aunt Polly gave a comprehensive sweep of the hand, including grandma in the house, Mary in the garden, and Jane, who stood by her on the door-stone.

“Good-bye all. Come, Janey, set me on the other side, and I’ll speak a good word for you to the beaus when they come to my tavern.”

Jane tied a handkerchief over her head, followed the old maid to the cove, unmoored her canoe, and soon reached the western shore.

Aunt Polly shook her by the hand, repeated a word of grim advice, then mounted the bank and threw out her handkerchief as a signal to Gineral Washington.

That inestimable beast had made the best of his time, and would willingly have stayed longer; but seeing his mistress’s gorgeous signal fluttering in the air, like the mainsail of a schooner, he made one more desperate crop at the rich herbage, and came trotting decorously forward, with the foam and short grass dropping from his mouth at every step.

Aunt Polly replaced the bit, let out an inch of the girth, to accommodate the animal’s digestive organs, mounted a hemlock stump, littered all round with fresh chips, and, after coaxing Gineral Washington into the right position, seated herself grimly on the side-saddle and rode away.

CHAPTER XV
THE SERPENT BRACELET

Mary Derwent was restless and dreamy all day after Aunt Polly left the island. Spite of herself, she was sad—no cause existed now—Jane was safe at home, sorry for her indiscretion, at heart, no doubt; Butler, she hoped and believed, had left the valley—certainly there was nothing to apprehend nor much to regret—yet tears lay close to those beautiful eyes all the day long. She pined to hide herself in some quiet place, and cry all her fancied trouble away. The strange woman was before her every moment; she could not, with any force of will, put that picturesque image aside; it came, like the shadow from some wild dream, and took full possession of her.

She went to the spring early, just as the first golden waves of sunset began to ripple up the west. The blossoming crab-apples flung a rosy tint above her, and the soft whispers of the spring, as it ran off among the stones, sounded sad and tearful as the breath in her bosom.

There was no sound, for the Indian moccasin treads lightly as a leaf falls, and Catharine Montour stood close by the young girl before she was aware of any human approach.

Mary lifted her face suddenly, and there, revealed by golden gleams of light that penetrated the boughs, she saw that strange face, surmounted by the serpent whose blood-red eyes glittered on her like a venomous asp about to bite.

Mary was the first to speak.

“You are the lady who wished me to be here?”

Her voice scarcely rose above the whispering waters, but Catherine heard it distinctly. Still she did not speak at once—some unaccountable emotion checked the breath on her lips.

“Yes; I asked a woman who said she was coming here to give my message. You are very kind to answer it so promptly.”

These were not the words Catherine had intended to say; but the gentle, almost holy presence of that young girl changed the whole current of her feelings. She came haughtily, as an inquisitor who had suffered wrong, but remained overpowered by the meek dignity of her reception.

“I had seen you once before, lady, and was glad to come.”

“Seen me, child, and where?”

“At the ledge, on the opposite shore, when you met Walter Butler.”

“And you heard that conversation?”

“Yes. I could not help it. Before it was possible to get away you had said everything.”

“Then you know that he is married to my daughter?”

“I know that he is married to a young Indian girl, who may be your daughter. The missionary told me of the marriage, but nothing more.”

“And your sister—for it is of her I wish to speak, it is her I warn—did she know this?”

“She knows it now.”

“Yet last night Tahmeroo, my daughter, the bride of Walter Butler, found your sister here under these very branches, planning to elope with him.”

“I know it,” answered Mary, shrinking together, and turning pale as if she, not Jane, had been in fault—“I know it; but that is all over now.”

“Do not be so sure of that, my poor child; there is no security against treachery and weakness; but if you are already informed that Walter Butler is married by every law that can bind two persons for life, my errand here is half done. Last night my unhappy child came to the camp wild with the torture that wicked man had inflicted. I will not speak harshly of your sister: if her folly works sharper than wickedness, it is not your fault; but my business here was to warn her of the danger she is braving. I did not wish to see a person whose folly has already irritated a temper not particularly placable, but sent for you, because my child told me of your kindness—your true, generous courage. I wished to thank you—to impress you with the danger that hangs over your family if Tahmeroo receives farther wrong or insult here.”

“I would rather die than think it could happen again,” answered Mary Derwent, with gentle earnestness. “My sister is so young—so very, very beautiful, that she is not content with the love of a single heart, as one who has nothing pleasant about her might be. It is only a fancy—a wild dream with her. I’m sure you would believe it could you see how dearly she is loved by—by one, oh! so much superior to this Captain Butler.”

“Then your sister is beloved—she is engaged, perhaps?”

“Beloved—oh, yes!” answered Mary, in a voice so sweetly mournful that the haughty soul of Catharine Montour thrilled within her. “They are engaged, too, I believe. You know it would be impossible for him to live near Jane and not wish to marry her. As for him, of course she cannot help loving him—who could?”

The last two words were uttered in a sigh so deep and heart-broken that Catharine felt it thrilling through her own frame. Her forest life had never possessed the power to dull or break that one string in her heart; it was sensitive and tremulous as ever. She understood all that Mary was suffering, and back upon her soul rushed a tide of sympathy so earnest and delicate that for a time those two beings, so opposite in all things else, felt painfully together—the one sad from memory, the other suffering under the weight of a cruel reality eternally present in her own person.

Unconsciously Catharine’s right hand fell upon the beautiful head, which bent under it like a flower on its stalk.

“Poor, poor child!” she murmured, and tears kept resolutely from her eyes, broke forth in her voice: “I know well how to feel for you.”

“No, no,” answered Mary. “One so grand—so like a queen, could not feel as I do; I never expect it. In the wide world there is not another girl like me. I sometimes feel as if the angels would only give me pity-love after I am dead, and then there would be no heaven for me either.”

“And are you so lonely of heart?” inquired Catharine, seating herself on the stone before Mary, and taking both her pale little hands with a kindly clasp. “You and I should feel for each other; for the same rugged path lies before you that I have trod.”

“The same—oh no, lady! You are straight and proud as a poplar. You don’t know what it is to go through life with your face bent to the ground, and the heart in your bosom warm and full of love, like other people’s.”

“Poor soul, and does this thought trouble you so? Are you indeed worse off than I have been, and so patient, too? Has the wilderness no hiding-place for human suffering?”

“I don’t know,” said Mary, filled with her own thoughts. “It seems as if I never could hide away; people are sure to find me out and stare at me. I think there is no place but the grave where one would be sure.”

Catharine could not speak; tears overmastered her and fell down her face like rain.

“Poor soul,” she said, “how can I comfort you?”

“I don’t know,” said Mary. “The minister sometimes tries to comfort me, but I’m afraid he has gone away for a long time; when he tells me that I can be useful, and make others happy just as I am, this trouble goes off a little. Oh! ma’am, I wish you could know the minister; or if you really care about making a poor girl like me feel better, talk as he does.”

“Alas!” said Catharine, “I am not humble and good, like him; but I can pity these feelings, and be your friend—a more powerful friend, perhaps, than he is, for I can protect you and yours from the hatred of the Indians.”

“Oh, but the Indians are my friends now; they love me a little, I am sure, for they smile when I speak to them, and call me pet names, as if I were a bird; perhaps it is because the minister likes me so much.”

“No; it is because—because of your——”

“Of this,” said Mary, interrupting her with a frightened look, and touching her shoulder with one hand. “Is it only pity with them, too?”

Catharine looked upon that pale spiritual face with ineffable compassion. She understood all the sorrow that rendered it so painfully beautiful.

“No, my child, it is not pity with them, but homage, adoration. That which you feel as a deformity, they hold to be a sacred seal of holiness which the Great Spirit sets upon his own. With them you, and such as you, are held only as little lower than the angels. This superstition may yet be your salvation, but a time is coming when even that will not be enough to protect you from harm.”

“What! would the Indians kill me—is that it?”

“They are savages, and hard of restraint; but I think that nothing human could be found to harm a creature so good and so helpless.”

“Then you think they could not be brought to kill me?” said Mary, with a look almost of disappointment.

“Why, you speak sadly, like one who wishes death.” Mary shook her head.

“No, I dare not wish death; but if the Indians wanted any one, and must have a life, they couldn’t find any person so ready to go, I’m sure.”

“This is very mournful,” said Catharine, drawing Mary’s head, with all its loose golden hair, to her bosom. “I wish the missionary, or any one else were here to console you. I am struck mute. Yet Heaven knows, if my own life could remove the cause of your sorrow, I would lay it down this moment. Do you believe me, child?”