The Black Eagle; or, Ticonderoga

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THE BLACK EAGLE;

OR,

TICONDEROGA.

THE

BLACK EAGLE;

OR,

TICONDEROGA.

BY

G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.

AUTHOR OF "THE GYPSY," "RICHELIEU," "DARNLEY,"
ETC. ETC.

A NEW EDITION.

LONDON:
ROUTLEDGE, WARNES, & ROUTLEDGE.

FARRINGDON STREET;
NEW YORK: 18, BEEKMAN STREET.
1859.

CONTENTS

THE BLACK EAGLE;

OR,

TICONDEROGA.

[CHAPTER I.]

"Among the minor trials of faith, few, perhaps, are more difficult to contend against than that growing conviction, which, commencing very soon after the holiday happiness of youth has been first tasted, becomes stronger every year, as experience unfolds to us the great, dark secrets of the world in which we are placed--the conviction of the general worthlessness of our fellow-men. A few splendid exceptions, a few bright and glorious spirits, a few noble and generous hearts, are not sufficient to cheer and to brighten the bleak prospect of the world's unworthiness; and we can only reconcile to our minds the fact that this vast multitude of base, depraved, tricky, insincere, ungrateful beings, are the pride of God's works, the express images of his person, by a recurrence to the great fundamental doctrine of man's fallen state, and utter debasement from his original high condition, and by a painful submission to the gloomy and fearful announcement, that 'strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, and few there he that find it.'

"If man's general unworthiness be a trial of our faith and of our patience, the most poignant anguish of the torture is perhaps the keen conviction of his ingratitude and his injustice--not alone the ingratitude and injustice of individuals, but those of every great body--of every group--of so-called friends, of governments, of countries, of people. Vainly do we follow the course of honour and uprightness; vainly do we strive to benefit, to elevate, to ennoble our fellow-men; vainly do we labour to serve our party, or our cause, or our country. Neither honour, nor distinction, nor reward, follows our best efforts, even when successful, unless we possess the mean and contemptible adjuncts of personal interest, pushing impudence, crooked policy, vile subserviency, or the smile of fortune.

"Here am I, who for many arduous years laboured with zeal, such as few have felt, at sacrifices such as few have made, and with industry such as few have exerted, to benefit my kind and my country. That I did so, and with success, was admitted by all; even while others, starting in the career of life at the same time with myself, turned their course in the most opposite direction, pandered to vice, to folly, and even to crime, and trod a flowery and an easy way, with few of the difficulties and impediments that beset my path.

"And what has been the result? Even success has brought to me neither reward, nor honour, nor gratitude. On those who have neither so laboured, nor so striven, whose objects have been less worthy, whose efforts have been less great, recompenses and distinctions have fallen thick and fast--a government's patronage--a sovereign's favour--a people's applause. And I am an exile on a distant shore; unthought of, unrecompensed, unremembered."

He paused with the pen in his hand, and the bitter and corroding thoughts of the neglect he had endured still busy in his mind, spreading into a thousand new channels, and poisoning all the sources of happiness within him. An old newspaper lay on the table. Newspapers were scarce in those days, and it had reached him tardily. Some accidental traveller through the wilderness had brought it to him lately, and he had found therein fresh proofs of the forgetfulness of friends--fresh evidence of the truth of the old axiom, "out of sight out of mind."

The perusal of this journal had given rise to the dark view of his own fate, and of human nature which he had just put upon record. His was not, in truth, a complaining spirit. It was not his nature to repine or to murmur. He had a heart to endure much, and to struggle on against obstacles: to take even bright and happy views: to rely upon friendship, and trust in God. It was only when some fresh burden was cast upon the load of ingratitude and falsehood he had met with, that a momentary burst of indignation broke from him--that the roused and irritated spirit spoke aloud. He had been a good friend, faithful, and true, and zealous. He had been a kind master, looking upon all around him as brethren, seeking their welfare and their happiness often more than his own. He had been a good subject, honouring and loving his sovereign, and obedient to the laws. He had been a good patriot, advocating by pen and voice (without fear, and without favour) all those measures which, from his very inmost heart, he believed were for his country's welfare, and grudging neither time, nor exertion, nor labour, nor money, to support that party which he knew to be actuated by the same principles as himself.

But, with all this, no one had ever sought to serve him; no one had ever thought of recompensing him. Many a friend had proved false, and neglected the best opportunity of promoting his interests: many, who had fed upon his bounty, or shared his purse, had back-bitten him in private, or maligned him in the public prints; and, though there were a few noble and generous exceptions, was it wonderful that there should be some bitterness in his heart, as he sat there in a lowly dwelling, in the midst of the woods of America, striving to carve a fortune from the wilderness for himself and his two children?

Yet it was but for a moment that the gloom was suffered to remain--that the repining spirit held possession of him. Though his hair was very gray--rather with care than with age--body and mind were both active, and his heart was quite young. Sometimes he could hardly fancy himself anything but a boy; such was still his delight in the things which had delighted his early youth. Neither were trifles--matters of mere material comfort or discomfort--capable of annoying him in any shape. He trod upon all petty annoyances; trampled them beneath his feet. He had lived at ease, moved in refined society, enjoyed the conversation of the wise, the high, and the noble; had servants to whom he said, "Do this," and they did it. But the absence of all these things, in his present solitude, affected him very little; sometimes provoked a smile, yet rarely called forth a sigh. Not even solitude oppressed him; though his was that kind of solitude which is the most oppressive,--the want of congenial minds and congenial spirits. Notwithstanding he had no near neighbours, the presence of man was not altogether wanting, though it was not of that kind which makes society for a mind like his. There was the shrewd, keen trader with the Indians, the rough, uncultivated pioneer of man's advance into the wilds, and an occasional wanderer like himself, seeking some place of settlement upon the very verge of civilization; but even this last kind of adventurer had none of those refinements which, at first sight, seemed to render the recluse, who recorded the foregoing reflections, as unfit for his position as man could be. Thus, there were scarcely any whose thoughts could be linked with his thoughts by associations either in the past or the present; none in habits or manners upon a par with himself; none who in cultivation of mind or general education could pretend to be his companion. The forest shut him and his little household in from all the accessories which custom, intellect, and taste had rendered precious.

Still, this privation had not affected him so much as might have been expected. He had resources in himself. He had some books, some musical instruments, and materials for drawing. He had his children too. It was only the decay of hopes, the frustration of bright aspirations, a bitter sense of the world's ingratitude, unmerited neglect, and the vanity of confidence, that ever clouded his heart as we have seen it clouded in the words he wrote. Those words were written in a record kept of each day's thoughts and actions, a record most useful to every man, in all circumstances; but, above all, to the disappointed, and to the solitary. There, day by day, he can trace the progress he has made against fate and his own heart--how far he has enlisted spirits of thought upon his side against the desolating warfare of silent hours--how far he has triumphed over circumstances, and conquered repining. He can detect, too, how often he has weakly yielded, how far he has fallen back before the enemy--what the ground gained, what the ground lost--and can strengthen himself to better endeavour.

Strong resolution is a mighty thing, and he who sat there had come with many a determination which remained unshaken, but yet to be fulfilled. Part of every resolution is a dream; for no man can ever say, "I will do thus or thus," with certainty; and the things which frustrate purposes, and retard and deny fruition, are generally petty obstacles and small impediments. The pebbles in our path weary us, and make us foot-sore, more than the rocks, which only require a bold effort to surmount. He trod firmly and strongly, however, undiscouraged by all minor difficulties; and it was only the grievance and oppression of spirit that ever caused him to sit down in sadness, and pause in the struggle onward.

The house was a neat, though a lowly one. It bore traces of newness; for the bark on the trunks which supported the little veranda, had not yet mouldered away. Nevertheless, it was not built by his own hands; for when he came there, he had much to learn in the rougher arts of life. But with a carpenter, from a village some nine miles off, he had aided to raise the building, and directed the construction by his own taste. The result was satisfactory to him; and, what was more in his eyes, was satisfactory to the two whom he loved best--at least, so it seemed; although those who knew them, even not so well as he did, might have doubted, and yet loved them all the better.

There is one sort of hypocrisy, and only one, which is lovable, which is noble, and perhaps they practised it: certainly if they saw a defect in anything that had been done, they would not have admitted it even to their own hearts; for their father had done it: if they ever felt a want, they never confessed it in their inmost thoughts; for their father had provided all that his means allowed.

Love, even earthly love, has a saving grace in it that keeps many a heart from destruction; and if, when a fit of gloom or sadness came upon him, the father felt that it was wrong to repine at anything which Heaven's will inflicted, he felt it the more bitterly wrong when he remembered the blessing which two such children were, even under the most adverse fate. He laid down the pen, then, with a sigh; and, in that sigh, self-reproach had a share, as well as sorrow.

Hardly was the ink dry upon the paper, when the sound of a horse's feet was heard without, beating with a slow and measured pace upon a part of the narrow road where the rock had been uncovered. It was a sound seldom heard in that little, lonely house; and the master thereof hastily put by the book in which he had been writing, and asked himself, "What now?"

[CHAPTER II.]

The door of the house was open, and custom admitted every visitor freely, whatever was his errand. It was a strange state of society, in which men, though taught by daily experience that precaution was necessary, took none. They held themselves occasionally ready to repel open assault, which was rare, and neglected every safeguard against insidious attack, which was much more common. They were frank and free spirits in those olden times; and, though it be now the custom to sneer at the state of society, and the habits both of thought and action, in days long gone, methinks it might have been better, while we polished away the coarseness of our ancestors, and remedied some of the evils of their early state, to have striven hard to retain their higher and finer qualities, their generous confidence, and that expansiveness of heart which the world so seldom sees in an age of mere material conveniences.

The door stood open, and it was the custom of the few who visited that secluded spot, to enter without ceremony, and to search in any or every room in the house for some one of the inhabitants. But, on this occasion, the horse that came up the road stopped at the gate of the little fence, and the traveller, when he reached the door, after dismounting, knocked with his whip before he entered.

The master of the house rose and went to the door. He was somewhat impatient of ceremony in a place where ceremony had long ceased; and his thoughts had not been of a tranquillizing nature; but the aspect and demeanor of his visitor were not of a kind to nourish any angry feeling. The latter was a young and very handsome man, probably not more than thirty years of age, sinewy, and well formed in person, with a noble and commanding countenance, a broad, lofty brow, and a keen, but tranquil eye. His manner was courteous, but grave; and he said, without waiting to have his errand asked--

"I know not, sir, whether I shall intrude upon you too far in asking hospitality for the night; but the sun is going down, and I was told by a lad whom I met in the woods just now, that there is no other house for ten miles farther, and, to say the truth, I am very ignorant of the way."

"Come in," said the master of the cottage; "we never refuse to receive a visiter here; and, indeed, have sometimes to accommodate more than the house will well hold. We are alone, however, now, and you will not have to put up with the inconveniences which our guests are sometimes obliged to encounter. Stay, I will order your horse to be taken care of."

Thus saying, he advanced a step or two beyond the door, and called, in a loud voice, for some one whom he named Agrippa. He had to shout more than once, however, before a negro appeared, blind in one eye, and somewhat lame withal, but yet, apparently, both active and intelligent.

The necessary orders were soon given; and, in a minute after, the traveller was seated with his host in the little parlour of the cottage. The manner of the latter could not be called cordial, though it was polite and courteous. It spoke a man acquainted with other scenes and other habits, but not a lover of his race; not a social or a genial spirit. The feelings, the thoughts, the memories, which had been busy in his brain, if not in his heart, before the arrival of the stranger, had thrown a coldness over his manner, which was only rendered not repulsive by the suavity of his words.

The other seemed to feel this in some degree; and a certain stateliness appeared in his demeanor, which was not likely to warm his host into greater familiarity.

Suddenly, however, the chilly atmosphere of the room was warmed in a moment, and a chain of sympathy was established between the two, by the presence of youth. A boy of fifteen, and a girl a little more than a year older, entered with gay and sunshiny looks, and the cloud was dispelled in a moment.

"My daughter Edith--my son Walter," said the master of the house, addressing the stranger, as the two young people bounded in; and then he added, with a slight inclination of the head, "It was an ancient and honourable custom in Scotland, when that country was almost as uncivilized as this, and possessed all the uncivilized virtues, never to inquire the name of a guest; and therefore I cannot introduce you to my children; but, doubtless, they will soon acknowledge you as their nameless friend."

"I am a friend of one of them already," answered the stranger, holding out his hand to the lad. "This is the young gentleman who told me that I should find the only house within ten miles about this spot, and his father willing to receive me--though he did not say that I should find a gem in the wilderness, and a gentleman in these wild woods."

"It has been a foolish fancy, perhaps," said the master of the house, "to carry, almost into the midst of savage life, some remnants of civilization. We keep the portraits of dead friends--a lock of hair--a trinket--a garment of the loved and departed. The habits and the ornaments of another state of society are to me like those dead friends, and I love to have some of their relics near me."

"Oh, my dear father," said Edith, seating herself by him, and leaning her head upon his bosom, without timidity or restraint, "you could never do without them. I remember when we were coming hither, now three years ago, that you talked a great deal of the joys of free, unshackled, natural existence; but I knew quite well, even then, that you would not be content till you had subdued the rough things around you to a more refined state."

"What made you think so, Edith?" asked her father, looking down at her with a smile.

"Because you never could bear the parson of the parish drinking punch and smoking tobacco-pipes," answered the beautiful girl, with a laugh; "and I was quite sure that it was not more savage life you sought, but greater refinement."

"Oh, yes, my father," added the lad, "and you often said, when we were in England, that the red Indian had much more of the real gentleman in him than many a peer."

"Dreams, dreams!" ejaculated their father, with a melancholy smile; and then, turning to the stranger, he added, "you see, sir, how keenly our weaknesses are read even by children. But come, Edith, our friend must be hungry with his long ride; see and hasten the supper. Our habits are primeval here, sir, like our woods. We follow the sun to bed, and wake him in the morning."

"They are good habits," observed the stranger, "and such as I am accustomed to follow myself. But do not, I pray you, hasten your supper for me. I am anything but a slave of times and seasons. I can fast long and fare scantily, without inconvenience."

"And yet you are an Englishman," remarked the master of the house, gravely; "a soldier, or I mistake; a man of rank and station, I am sure; though all three would generally imply, as the world goes at this present time, a fondness for luxurious ease and an indulgence of all the appetites."

A slight flush came into his companion's cheek, and the other hastened to add,--

"Believe me, I meant nothing discourteous. I spoke of the Englishman, the soldier, and the man of rank and station, generally--not of yourself. I see it is far otherwise with you."

"You hit hard, my good friend," rejoined the stranger, "and there is some truth in what you say. But, perhaps, I have seen as many lands as you; and I boldly venture to pronounce that the fault is in the age, not in the nation, the profession, or the class. We will try to amend it. That is the best course; and, though individual effort can do but little, each separate man may improve several others; and thus onward to better things and better days."

As he spoke, he rose, walked thoughtfully to the window, and gazed out for a moment or two in silence; and then, turning round, he said, addressing his host's son--"How beautifully the setting sun shines down yonder glade in the forest, pouring, as it were, in a golden mist through the needle foliage of the pines! Runs there a road down there?"

The boy answered in the affirmative; and, drawing close to the stranger's side, pointed out to him by the undulations of the ground, and the gaps in the tree-tops, the wavy line that the road followed, down the side of the gentle hill on which the house stood, and up the opposite ascent. His description was peculiarly clear and accurate. He seemed to have marked every tree and stone and brook along the path; and where a by-way diverged, or where the road divided into two, he noted the marking object, saying--

"By a white oak and a great hemlock tree, there is a footpath to the left: at a clump of large cedars on the edge of the swamp the road forks out to the right and left, one branch leading eastward towards the river, and one out westward to the hunting-grounds."

The stranger seemed to listen to him with pleasure, often turning his eyes to the lad's face as he spoke, rather than to the landscape to which he pointed; and when he had done, he laid, his hand on his shoulder, saying--

"I wish I had such a guide as you, Walter, for my onward journey."

"Will it be far?" asked the youth.

"Good faith, I cannot well tell," answered the other. "It may be as far as Montreal, or even to Quebec, if I get not satisfaction soon."

"I could not guide you as far as that," replied the boy; "but I know every step towards the lakes, as well as an Indian."

"With whom he is very fond of consorting," said his father, with a smile.

But before the conversation could proceed, an elderly, respectable woman-servant entered the room, and announced that supper was on the table. Edith had not returned; but they found her in a large, oblong chamber, to which the master of the house led the way. There was a long table in the midst, and four wooden chairs arranged round one end, over which a snowy table-cloth was spread. The rest of the table was bare. But a number of other seats, and two or three benches, were in the room, while at equal distances on either side, touching the walls, lay several bear-skins and buffalo-skins, as if spread out for beds.

The eye of the stranger glanced over them as he entered; but his host replied to his thoughts with a smile, saying--

"We will lodge you somewhat better than that, sir. We have, just now, more than one room vacant; but you must know there is no such thing as privacy in this land, and when we have a visit from our Indian friends, those skins make them supremely happy. I often smile to think how a red man would feel in Holland sheets. I tried it once, but it did not succeed. He pulled the blankets off the bed, and slept upon the floor."

When the companions were seated at table the conversation turned to many subjects, general, of course; yet personally interesting to both the elder members of the party--at least, so it seemed from the eagerness with which they discussed them. The state of the colonies was spoken of; the state of England; the relation of the two to each other; and the dangers which were then apprehended from the encroaching spirit of the French, who were pushing forward posts on every point of their frontier, into territories undoubtedly British. No mention was ever made of even the probability of the separation of England from her North American colonies; for at that time the idea had never entered into the imagination of any, except some of those quiet students of the past, who sometimes derive, from the very dissimilar history of former days, a foresight regarding the future, which partakes of, without being wholly, intuition, and whose warnings, like Cassandra's, are always scoffed at till the time for remedial action is passed. The danger to the British possessions in North America seemed, to the eyes of almost all men, to lie in the power, the eager activity, and the grasping spirit of France; and the little cloud of dissatisfaction, no bigger than a man's hand, which hung upon the horizon of British interests in the transatlantic world, was little supposed to forebode the storm and the earthquake which should rend the colonies from the mother-country. Alas, for man's calculations, and for his foresight! How rarely, how very rarely, do they penetrate below the surface of the present or the future!

Both the host and his guest had travelled far, and had seen much. Both, also, had thought much; but experience was, of course, on the side of the elder. The other, however, had one advantage--he had seen the European countries of which they spoke, at a much later period than his companion; and many great changes had taken place, of which the latter had no personal knowledge. Thus, they viewed the state of society in the old world from different points, and, of course, held different opinions, especially regarding France. Nevertheless, the views of him who had not been in that land for many years were, upon the whole, more accurate than those of the other. He was a man of singular acuteness of perception, who judged less from broad and glittering surfaces than from small but fundamental facts; while the other, a man of action and quick intelligence, though clear and accurate in his perception of all with which he had immediately to do, judged it a waste of time to carry his thoughts far into the future, over which he could have no control. Somewhat dazzled by the military display, and, apparently, well-cemented power of government which he had beheld in France just before he quitted Europe, he entertained great apprehensions regarding her progress in America, and expressed them.

"I entertain but little fear," replied the other, "and will never remove a steer from my stall till I see the French at my door. They may advance for some short distance, and for some short time, but they will be forced to recoil."

"God grant it!" ejaculated the guest; "but more energetic measures must be taken to repel them than have been hitherto employed. The French force at this time in Canada, I am assured, outnumbers, by many thousands, the whole disposable forces of our colonies. They are of a different material, too, from our armies, and officered by very different men. The Frenchman accommodates himself better to circumstances than the Englishman; is as brave, though less persevering; is more agile, though less vigorous. The French troops here, too, are accustomed to the march through the forest, and the skirmish in the wood; and their officers know far better than ours how to carry on their operations with, or against, the Indians. We are too rigid in our notions of discipline, too pedantic in our system of tactics. In one set of circumstances, we follow the rules that are only applicable to another; and in planning our operations, though we may consider the local features of the country, and the force opposed to us, we refuse to take into calculation the character and habits of our enemy. We may be victorious in the end, and I trust in God that we shall; but depend upon it, my good sir, we require, and shall have, probably more than one good drubbing, before we learn our lesson completely. Now, we cannot afford many drubbings, for our small island cannot afford many men. Already, to contend with the enemies we have in Europe, we have to subsidize fifty thousand foreigners, a practice much to be deprecated, and which I should be sorry to see introduced here; for though, by blood, not wholly English, I know that the intrinsic value of the British soldier is superior to that of any other on the face of the earth. We cannot, however, supply this country with reinforcements to meet many checks; while France, from her much larger population, can pour a continuous stream of troops into her colonies."

"Not for long," answered his host. "The fabric of her power is undermined at the foundation; the base is rotten; and the building, though imposing without, is crumbling to decay. It is well, however, to see as you do the utmost extent of a danger--perhaps, even to overestimate it, in order to meet it the more vigorously. Depend upon it, however, the present state of things in France is not destined for long duration. I judge not by the feebleness she has shown of late years in many most important efforts. Beset as she is by enemies, and enemies close at her gates, distant endeavours may well be paralyzed without there being any real diminution of her power. But I judge from what I myself saw in that country a good many years ago. The people--the energetic, active, though volatile people, in whom lies her real strength--were everywhere oppressed and suffering. Misery might drive them into her armies, and give them the courage of despair; but, at the same time, it severed all ties between them and those above them--substituted contempt and hatred for love and reverence, in the case of the nobility, and fear, doubt, and an inclination to resist, for affection, confidence, and obedience, towards the throne. Corruption, spreading through every class of society, could only appear more disgusting when clad in the robes of royalty, or tricked out in the frippery of aristocracy; and nations speedily learn to resist powers which they have ceased to respect. A state of society cannot long endure, in which, on the one side, boundless luxury, gross depravity, and empty frivolity, in a comparatively small body, and grinding want, fierce passions, and eager, unsated desires on the other side, are brought into close contiguity, without one moral principle, or one religious light--where there is nothing but the darkness of superstition, or the deeper darkness of infidelity. Ere many years have passed, the crown of France will have need of all her troops at home."

The stranger mused much upon his companion's words, and seemed to feel that they were prophetical. The same, or very nearly the same, were written by another; but they were not given to the world for several years after, on the eve of the great catastrophe; and in the year one thousand seven hundred and fifty-seven, few seemed to dream that the power of France could ever be shaken, except by an external enemy. Men ate, and drank, and danced, and sang, in the Parisian capital, as gaily as they did in the palace of Sardanapalus, with as great a fall at hand.

The conversation then assumed a lighter tone. Each asked the other of his travels, and commented on many objects of interest which both had seen on the broad high-ways of the world. Both were men of thought, according to their several characters--both men of taste and refinement; and the two young people, who had sat silent, listening to their graver discourse, now joined in, from time to time, with happy freedom and unchecked ease. Their father's presence was no restraint upon them; for, in all that they had known of life, he had been their companion and their friend--the one to whom their hearts had been ever opened--the one chiefly reverenced from love. The stranger, too, though he was grave, was in no degree stern, and there was something winning even in his very gravity. He listened, too, when they spoke--heard the brief comment--answered the eager question; and a kindly smile would, ever and anon, pass over his lip, at the strange mixture of refinement and simplicity which he found in those two young beings, who passed many a month of every year without seeing any one, except the wild Indians of the friendly tribes surrounding them, or an occasional trader wending his way, with his wares, up the stream of the Mohawk.

More than an hour was beguiled at the table--a longer period than ordinary--and then the bright purple hues, which spread over the eastern wall of the room, opposite to the windows, told that the autumnal sun had reached the horizon. The master of the house rose to lead the way into the other room again; but ere he moved from the table, an additional figure was added to the group around it, though the foot was so noiseless that no one heard its first entrance into the chamber.

The person who had joined the little party was a man of the middle age, of a tall, commanding figure, upright and dignified carriage, and fine, but somewhat strongly-marked, features. The expression of his countenance was grave and noble; but there was a certain strangeness in it--a touch of wildness perhaps I might call it--very difficult to define.

It was not in the eyes; for they were good, calm, and steadfast, gazing straight at any object of contemplation, and fixed full upon the face of any one he addressed. It was not in the lips; for, except when speaking, they were firm and motionless. Perhaps it was in the eyebrow, which, thick and strongly marked, was, every now and then, suddenly raised or depressed, without any apparent cause.

His dress was very strange. He was evidently of European blood, although his skin was embrowned by much exposure to sun and weather. Yet he wore not altogether either the European costume, the garb of the American back-woodsman, or that of the Indian. There was a mixture of all, which gave him a wild and fantastic appearance. His coat was evidently English, and had stripes of gold lace upon the shoulders; his knee-breeches and high riding-boots would have looked English also, had not the latter being destitute of soles, properly so called; for they were made somewhat like a stocking, and the part beneath the foot was of the same leather as the rest. Over his shoulder was a belt of rattlesnake skin, and round his waist a sort of girdle, formed from the claws of the bear, from which depended a string of wampum, while two or three knives and a small tomahawk appeared on either side. No other weapon had he whatever. But under his left arm hung a common powder-flask, made of cow's horn, and, beside it, a sort of wallet, such as the trappers commonly used for carrying their little store of Indian corn. A round fur cap, of bear-skin, without any ornament whatever, completed his habiliments.

It would seem that in that house he was well known; for its master instantly held forth his hand to him, and the young people sprang forward and greeted him warmly. A full minute elapsed before he spoke; but nobody uttered a word till he did so, all seeming to understand his habits.

"Well, Mr. Prevost," he said, at length, "I have been a stranger to your wigwam for some time. How art thou, Walter? Not a man yet, in spite of all thou canst do. Edith, my sweet lady, time deals differently with thee from thy brother. He makes thee a woman against thy will." Then, turning suddenly to the stranger, he said, "Sir, I am glad to see you; were you ever at Kielmansegge?"

"Once," replied the stranger, laconically.

"Then we will confer presently," observed the new comer. "How have you been this many a day, Mr. Prevost? You must give me food; for I have ridden far--I will have that bear-skin, too, for my night's lodging place, if it be not pre-engaged. No, not that one; the next. I have told Agrippa to see to my horse, for I ever count upon your courtesy."

There was something extremely stately and dignified in his whole tone, and, with frank straightforwardness, but without any indecorous haste, he seated himself at the table, drew towards him a large dish of cold meat, and, while Edith and her brother hastened to supply him with everything else he needed, proceeded to help himself liberally to whatever was within his reach. Not a word more did he speak for several minutes, while Mr. Prevost and his guest stood looking on in silence, and the two young people attended the new comer at the table.

As soon as he had done, he rose abruptly, and then, looking first to Mr. Prevost, and next to the stranger, said--

"Now, gentlemen, if you please, we will to council."

The stranger hesitated; and Mr. Prevost answered, with a smile--

"I am not of the initiated, Sir William, so I and the children will leave you with my guest, whom you seem to know, but of whose name and station I am ignorant."

"Stay, stay," interposed the other, to whom he spoke, "we shall need not only your advice but your concurrence. This gentleman, my lord, I will answer for, as a faithful and loyal subject of his Majesty King George. He has been treated with that hardest of all hard treatment--neglect. But his is a spirit in which not even neglect can drown out loyalty to his king and love to his country. Moreover, I may say, that the neglect which he has met with has proceeded from a deficiency in his own nature. God, unfortunately, did not make him a grumbler, or he would have been a peer long ago. The Almighty endowed him with all the qualities that could benefit his fellow-creatures, but denied him those which were necessary to advance himself. Others have wondered that he never met with honours, or distinction, or reward. I wonder not at all; for he is neither a charlatan, nor a coxcomb, nor a pertinacious beggar. He cannot stoop to slabber the hand of power, nor lick the spittle of the man in office. How can such a man have advancement? It is contrary to the course of the things of this world. But as he has loved his fellow-men, so will he love them. As he has served his country, so will he serve it. As he has sought honour and truth more than promotion, honour and truth will be his reward. Alas, that it should be the only one! But when he dies, if he dies unrecompensed, it will not be unregretted or unvenerated. He must be of our council."

Mr. Prevost had stood by in silence, with his eyes bent upon the ground, and, perhaps, some self-reproach at his heart for the bitter words that he had written only a few hours before. But Edith sprang forward, and caught Sir William Johnson's hand, as he ended the praises of her father; and, bending her head with exquisite grace, pressed her lips upon it. Her brother seemed inclined to linger for a moment; but saying, "Come, Walter," she glided out of the room, and the young lad, following, closed the door behind him.

[CHAPTER III.]

"Who can he be?" said Walter Prevost, when they had reached the little sitting-room. "Sir William called him 'my lord.'"

Edith smiled at her brother's curiosity. Oh, how much older women always are than men!

"Lords are small things here, Walter," she said, gazing forth from the window at the stately old trees within sight of the house, which for her, as for all expanding minds, had their homily. Age--hackneyed age--reads few lessons. It ponders those long received, subtilizes, refines, combines. Youth has a lesson in every external thing; but, alas! soon forgets the greater part of all.

"I do not think that lords are small things anywhere," answered her brother, who had not imbibed any of the republican spirit which was even then silently creeping over the American people. "Lords are made by kings for great deeds, or great virtues."

"Then they are lords of their own making," retorted Edith; "kings only seal the patent nature has bestowed. That great red oak, Walter, was growing before the family of any man now living was ennobled by the hand of royalty."

"Pooh, nonsense, Edith!" ejaculated her brother; "you are indulging in one of your day-dreams. What has that oak to do with nobility?"

"I hardly know," replied his sister; "yet something linked them together in my mind. It seemed as if the oak asked me, 'What is their antiquity to mine?' and yet the antiquity of their families is their greatest claim to our reverence."

"No, no!" cried Walter Prevost, eagerly; "their antiquity is nothing, for we are all of as ancient a family as they are. But it is that they can show a line from generation to generation, displaying some high qualities, ennobled by some great acts. Granted that here or there a sluggard, a coward, or a fool, may have intervened, or that the acts which have won praise in other days may not be reverenced now; yet I have often heard my father say, that, in looking back through records of noble houses, we shall find a sum of deeds and qualities suited to, and honoured by, succeeding ages, which, tried by the standard of the times of the men, shows that hereditary nobility is not merely an honour won by a worthy father for unworthy children, but a bond to great endeavours, signed by a noble ancestor, on behalf of all his descendants. Edith, you are not saying what you think."

"Perhaps not," answered Edith, with a quiet smile; "but let us have some lights, Walter, for I am well-nigh in darkness."

They were not ordinary children. I do not intend to represent them as such. But he who says that what is not ordinary is not natural, may, probably, be an ass. How they had become what they were is another question; but that is easily explained. First--Nature had not made them of her common clay; for, notwithstanding all bold assertions of that great and fatal falsehood, that all men are born equal, such is not the case. No two men are ever born equal. No two leaves are alike upon a tree, and there is a still greater dissimilarity--a still greater inequality--between the gifts and endowments of different men. God makes them unequal. God raises the one, and depresses the other, ay, from the very birth, in the scale of his creation; and man, by one mode or another, in every state of society, and in every land, recognizes the difference, and assigns the rank. Nature, then, had not made those two young people of her common clay. Their father was no common man; their mother had been one in whom mind and heart, thought and feeling, had been so nicely balanced, that emotion always found a guide in judgment. But this was not all. The one child up to the age of thirteen, the other until twelve, had been trained and instructed with the utmost care. Every advantage of education had been lavished upon them, and every natural talent they possessed had been developed, cultivated, directed. They had been taught from mere childhood to think, as well as to know; to use, as well as to receive, information. Then had come a break--the sad, jarring break in the sweet chain of the golden hours of youth--a mother's death. Till then their father had borne much from the world and from society unflinching. But then his stay and his support were gone. Visions became realities for him. What wonder if, when the light of his home had gone out, his mental sight became somewhat dim, the objects around him indistinct? He gathered together all he had, and migrated to a distant land, where small means might be considered great, and where long-nourished theories of life might be tried by the test of experience.

To his children, the change was but a new phase of education--one not often tried, but not without its uses. If their new house was not completely a solitude, it was very nearly so. Morally and physically they were thrown nearly upon their own resources. But previous training had made those resources many. Mentally, at least, they brought a great capital into the wilderness, and they found means to employ it. Everything around them, in its newness and its freshness, had a lesson and a moral. The trees, the flowers, the streams, the birds, the insects, the new efforts, the new labours, the very wants and deficiencies of their present state--all taught them something. Had they been born amidst such things; had they been brought up in such habits; had their previous training been at all of the same kind; or, even had the change been as great as it might have been; had they been left totally destitute of comforts, conveniences, attendance, books, companionships, objects of art and taste, to live the life of the savage,--the result might have been--must have been--very different. But there was enough left of the past to link it beneficially to the present. They brought all the materials with them from their old world for opening out the rich mines of the new. It is not to be wondered at, then, if they were no ordinary children; and if, at fifteen and sixteen, they reasoned and thought of things, and in modes, not often dealt with by the young. I say, not often; because, even under other circumstances, and with no such apparent causes, we see occasional instances of beings like themselves.

They were, then, no ordinary children, but yet quite natural.

The influences which surrounded them had acted differently, of course, on the boy and on the girl. He had learned to act as well as think: she to meditate as well as act. He had acquired the strength, the foot, the ear, the eye of the Indian. She, too, had gained much in activity and hardihood; but in the dim glades, and on the flower-covered banks, by the side of the rushing stream, or hanging over the roaring cataract, she had learned to give way to long and silent reveries, dealing both with the things of her own heart and the things of the wide world; comparing the present with the past, the solitude with society, meditating upon life and its many phases, and yielding herself, while the silent majesty of the scene seemed to sink into her soul, to what her brother was wont to call her "day-dreams."

I have said that she dealt with the things of her own heart. Let me not be misunderstood: the things of that heart were very simple. They had never been complicated with even a thought of love. Her own fate, her own history, her soul in its relation to God and to His creation, the sweet and bright emotions produced within her by all things beautiful in art or nature, the thrill excited by a lovely scene or a dulcet melody, the trance-like pleasure of watching the clear stream waving the many-coloured pebbles of its bed, these, and such as these, were the things of the heart I spoke of; and on them she would dwell and ponder, asking herself what they were, whence they came, how they arose, whither they tended. It was the music, the poetry, of her own nature, in all its strains, which she sought to search into; but the sweetest, though sometimes the saddest, of the harmonies in woman's heart was yet wanting.

She had read of love, it is true; she had heard it spoken of, but, with a timidity not rare in the most sensitive minds, she had excluded it even from her day-dreams. She knew that there was such a thing as passion: she might be conscious that it was latent in her own nature; but she tried not to seek it out. To her it was an abstraction. Psyche had not held the lamp to Eros.

So much it was needful to say of the two young Prevosts before we went onward with our tale; and now, as far as they were concerned, the events of that day were near their close. Lights were brought, and Walter and his sister sat down to muse over books--I can hardly say read--till their father re-appeared; for the evening prayer and the parting kiss had never been omitted in their solitude ere they lay down to rest.

The conference in the hall, however, was long, and more than an hour elapsed before the three gentlemen entered the room. Then a few minutes were passed in quiet conversation, and then, all standing round the table, Mr. Prevost raised his voice, saying,

"Protect us, O Father Almighty! in the hours of darkness and unconsciousness. Give us Thy blessing of sleep, to refresh our minds and bodies; and, if it be Thy will, let us wake again to serve and praise Thee through another day more perfectly than in the days past, for Christ's sake."

The Lord's Prayer succeeded; and then they separated to their rest.

[CHAPTER IV.]

Before daylight in the morning, Sir William Johnson was on foot, and in the stable. Some three or four negro-slaves--for there were slaves then on all parts of the American continent--lay sleeping soundly in a small sort of barrack hard by; and, as soon as one of them could be roused, Sir William's horse was saddled, and he rode away, without pausing to eat, or to say farewell. He bent his course direct towards the Mohawk, flowing at some twenty miles' distance from the cottage of Mr. Prevost.

Before Sir William had been five minutes in the saddle, he was in the midst of the deep woods which surrounded the little well-cultivated spot where the English wanderer had settled. It was a wild and rather gloomy scene into which he plunged; for, though something like a regular road had been cut, along which carts as well as horses could travel, yet that road was narrow, and the branches nearly met overhead.

In some places the underwood, nourished by a moist and marshy soil, was too thick and tangled to be penetrated either by foot or eye. In others, where the path ascended to higher grounds, or passed amongst the hard dry rocks, the aspect of the forest changed. Pine after pine, with now and then an oak, a chestnut, or a locust-tree, covered the face of the country, with hardly a shrub upon the ground below, which was carpeted with the brown slippery needles of the resinous trees; and between the huge trunks poured the grey, mysterious light of the early dawn, while a thin, whitish vapour hung amongst the boughs overhead.

About a mile from the house, a bright and beautiful stream crossed the road, flowing on towards the greater river; but bridge there was none, and, in the middle of the stream, Sir William suffered his horse to stop, and bend its head to drink. He gazed to the westward, but all there was dark and gloomy under the thick overhanging branches. He turned his eyes to the eastward, where the ground was more open, and the stream could be seen flowing on for nearly half a mile, with little cascades, and dancing rapids, and calm lapses of bright, glistening water, tinted with a rosy hue, where the morning sky gleamed down upon it through some break in the forest canopy.

While thus gazing, his eye rested on a figure standing in the midst of the stream, with rod in hand, and the back turned towards him. He thought he saw another figure also amongst the trees upon the bank; but it was shadowy there, and the form seemed shadowy too.

After gazing for a minute or so, he raised his voice, and exclaimed--

"Walter!--Walter Prevost!"

The lad heard him, and, laying his rod upon the bank, hastened along over the green turf to join him; at the same moment the figure amongst the trees--if really figure it was--disappeared from the sight.

"Thou art out early, Walter," said Sir William. "What do you at this hour?"

"I am catching trout for the stranger's breakfast," replied the lad, with a gay laugh. "You should have had your share, had you but waited."

"Who was that speaking to you on the bank above?" asked the other, gravely.

"Merely an Indian girl watching me fishing," responded Walter Prevost.

"I hope your talk was discreet," rejoined Sir William. "These are dangerous times, when trifles are of import, Walter."

"There was no indiscretion," returned the lad, with the colour mounting slightly in his cheek. "She was remarking the feather-flies with which I caught the trout, and blamed me for using them. She said it was a shame to catch anything with false pretences."

"She is wise," observed the other, with a faint smile; "yet that is hardly the wisdom of her people. An Indian maiden!" he added, thoughtfully. "Of what tribe is she? One of the Five Nations, I trust?"

"Oh, yes--an Oneida," replied Walter; "one of the daughters of the Stone; the child of a Sachem, who often lodges at our house."

"Well, be she whom she may," rejoined Sir William, "be careful of your speech, Walter, especially regarding your father's guest. I say not, to conceal that there is a stranger with you, for that cannot be; but, whatever you see or guess of his station, or his errand, keep it to yourself, and let not a woman be the sharer of your thoughts, till you have tried her with many a trial."

"She would not betray them, I am sure," said the lad, warmly; and then added, with slight embarrassment, as if he felt that he had in a degree betrayed himself, "but she has nothing to reveal, or to conceal. Our talk was all of the river, and the fish. We met by accident, and she is gone."

"Perhaps you may meet again by accident," suggested the other, "and then be careful. But now, to more serious things. Perchance your father may have to send you to Albany--perchance, to my castle. You can find your way speedily to either. Is it not so?"

"Farther than either," replied the lad, gaily.

"But you may have a heavy burden to carry," rejoined Sir William; "do you think you can bear it?--I mean the burden of a secret."

"I will not drop it by the way," returned Walter, gravely.

"Not if the Sachem's daughter offers to divide the load?" asked his companion.

"Doubt me not," replied Walter.

"I do not doubt you," said Sir William, "I do not. But I would have you warned. And now farewell. You are very young to meet maidens in the wood. Be careful. Farewell."

He rode on, and the boy tarried by the wayside, and meditated. His were very strange thoughts, and stranger feelings. They were the feelings that only come to any person once in a lifetime--earlier with some, later with others--the ecstatic thrill, the joyous emotion, the dancing of the young bright waters of early life, in the pure morning sunshine of first love--the dream--the vision--the trance of indefinite joy--the never-to-be-forgotten, the never-to-be-renewed, first glance at the world of passion that is within us. Till that moment, he had been as one climbing a mountain with thick boughs shading from his eyes the things before him; but his friend's words had been a hand drawing back the branches on the summit, and showing him a wondrous and lovely sight beyond.

Was he not very young to learn such things? O yes, he was very, very young; but it was natural that in that land he should learn them young. All was young there: all is young: everything is rapid and precocious; the boy has the feelings of the young man; the young man the thoughts of maturity. The air, the climate, the atmosphere of the land and the people, all have their influence. The shrubs grow up in an hour: the flowers succeed each other with hasty profusion, and even the alien and the stranger-born feel the infection, and join unresistingly in the rapid race. Well did the dreamers of the Middle Ages place the fountain of youth on the shores of the new world.

The boy, who stood there meditating, had lived half a lifetime in the few short years he had spent upon that soil; and now, at Sir William's words, as with him of old, the scales fell from his eyes, and he saw into his own heart.

His reverie lasted not long, indeed; but it was long enough. In about two minutes, he took his way up the stream again, still musing, towards the place where he had laid down his rod upon the bank. He heeded not much where he set his feet. Sometimes it was on the dry ground, by the side of the stream; sometimes it was in the gurgling waters, and amongst the glossy pebbles.

He paused, at length, where he had stood fishing a few minutes before, and looked up to the bank covered with green branches. He could see nothing there in the dim obscurity; but even the murmur of the waters and the sighing of the wind did not prevent him from hearing a sound--a gentle stirring of the boughs. He sprang up the bank, and in amongst the maples; and, about ten minutes after, the sun, rising higher, poured its light through the stems upon a boy and girl, seated at the foot of an old tree: he, with his arms around her, and his hand resting on the soft, brown, velvety skin, and she, with her head upon his bosom, and her warm lips within the reach of his. What, though a sparkling drop or two gemmed her sunny cheek, they were but the dew of the sweetest emotion that ever refreshes the summer morning of our youth.

Her skin was brown, I have said--yes, very brown--but, still, hardly browner than his own. Her eyes were dark and bright, of the true Indian hue, but larger and more open than is at all common in any of the tribes of Iroquois. Her lips, too, were as rosy and as pure of all tinge of brown, as those of any child of Europe; and her fingers, also, were stained of Aurora's own hue. But her long, silky, black hair would have spoken her race at once, had not each tress terminated in a wavy curl. The lines of the form and of the face were all wonderfully lovely too, and yet were hardly those which characterize so peculiarly the Indian nations. The nose was straighter, the cheek-bones less prominent, the head more beautifully set upon the shoulders. The expression, also, as she rested there, with her cheek leaning on his breast, was not that of the usual Indian countenance. It was softer, more tender, more impassioned; for, though romance and poetry have done all they could to spiritualize the character of Indian love, I fear, from what I have seen, and heard, and known, it is rarely what it has been portrayed. Her face, however, was full of love, and tenderness, and emotion; and the picture of the two, as they sat there, told, at once, the tale of love just spoken to a willing ear.

There let us leave them. It was a short hour of joy; a sweet dream in the dark, stormy night of life. They were happy, with the unalloyed happiness so seldom known even for an hour, without fear, or doubt, or guilt, or remorse; and so let them be. What matters it if a snake should glide through the grass hard by? it may pass on, and not sting them. What matters it if a cloud should hang over the distant horizon?--the wind may waft away the storm. Forethought is a curse or a blessing, as we use it. To guard against evils that we see is wise, to look forth for those we cannot guard against is folly.

[CHAPTER V.]

The hour of breakfast had arrived, when Walter Prevost returned with his river spoil; but the party at the house had not yet sat down to table. The guest who had arrived on the preceding night was standing at the door, talking with Edith, while Mr. Prevost himself was within, in conference with some of the slaves. Shaded by the little rustic porch, Edith was leaning against the doorpost in an attitude of exquisite grace; and the stranger, with his arms crossed upon his broad, manly chest, now raising his eyes to her face, now dropping them to the ground, seemed to watch with interest the effect his words produced, as it was written on that beautiful countenance. I have said with interest, rather than with admiration; for although it is hardly possible to suppose that the latter had no share in his sensations, yet it seemed, as far as outward manner could indicate inward thought, that he was reading a lesson from her looks, instead of gazing upon a beautiful picture. The glance, too, was so calm, and so soon withdrawn, that there could be nothing offensive in it--nothing that could even say to herself, "I am studying you," although a looker-on might so divine.

His words were gay and light indeed, and his whole manner very different from the day before. A cloud seemed to have passed away--a cloud rather of reflection than of care; and Walter, as he came up, and heard his cheerful tones, wondered at the change; for he knew not how speedily men accustomed to action and decision cast from them the burden of weighty thought, when the necessity for thought is past.

"I know not," said the stranger, speaking as the young man approached--"I know not how I should endure it myself for any length of time. The mere abstract beauty of nature would soon pall upon my taste, I fear, without occupation."

"But you would make occupation," answered Edith, earnestly; "you would find it. Occupation for the body is never wanting, where you have to improve, and cultivate, and ornament; and occupation for the mind flows in from a thousand gushing sources in God's universe--even were one deprived of books and music."

"Ay, but companionship, and social converse, and the interchange of thought with thought," said the stranger,--"where could one find those?" And he raised his eyes to her face.

"Have I not my brother and my father?" she asked.

"True," said the other; "but I should have no such resource."

He had seen a slight hesitation in her last reply. He thought that he had touched the point where the yoke of solitude galled the spirit. He was not one to plant or to nourish discontent in any one; and he turned at once to her brother, saying, "What, at the stream so early, my young friend? Have you had sport?"

"Not very great," answered Walter; "my fish are few, but they are large. Look here."

"I call such sport excellent," observed the stranger, looking into the basket. "I must have you take me with you some fair morning, for I am a great lover of the angle."

The lad hesitated, and turned somewhat redder in the cheek than he had been the moment before; but his sister saved him from reply, saying in a musing tone,--

"I cannot imagine what delight men find in what they call the sports of the field. To inflict death may be a necessity, but surely should not be an amusement."

"Man is born a hunter, Miss Prevost," replied the stranger, with a smile: "he must chase something. It was at first a necessity, and it is still a pleasure when it is no longer a need. But the enjoyment is not truly in the infliction of death, but in the accessories. The eagerness of pursuit; the active exercise of the faculties, mental and corporeal; the excitement of expectation, and of success,--nay, even of delay; the putting forth of skill and dexterity, all form part of the enjoyment. But there are, especially in angling, a thousand accidental pleasures. It leads one through lovely scenes; we meditate upon many things as we wander on; we gaze upon the dancing brook, or the still pool, and catch light from the light amidst the waters; all that we see is suggestive of thought,--I might almost say of poetry. Ah, my dear young lady! few can tell the enjoyment, in the midst of busy, active, troublous life, of one calm day's angling by the side of a fair stream, with quiet beauty all around us, and no adversary but the speckled trout."

"And why should they be your foes?" asked Edith. "Why should you drag them from their cool, clear element, to pant and die in the dry upper air?"

"'Cause we want to eat 'em," uttered a voice from the door behind her: "they eats everything. Why shouldn't we eat them? Darn this world! it is but a place for eating, and being eaten. The bivers that I trap eat fish; and many a cunning trick the crafty critters use to catch 'em: the minkes eat birds, and birds' eggs. Men talk about beasts of prey. Why, everything is a beast of prey, bating the oxen and the sheep, and such-like; and sometimes I've thought it hard to kill them who never do harm to no one, and a great deal of good sometimes. But, as I was saying, everything's a beast of prey. It's not lions, and tigers, and painters, and such; but from the fox to the emmet, from the beetle to the bear, they're all alike, and man at the top o' them. Darn them all! I kill 'em when I can catch 'em, ma'am, and always will. But come, Master Walter, don't ye keep them fish in the sun. Give 'em to black Rosie, the cook, and let us have some on 'em for breakfast afore they're all wilted up."

The types of American character are very few--much fewer than the American people imagine. There are three or four original types very difficult to distinguish from their varieties; and all the rest are mere modifications--variations on the same air. It is thus somewhat difficult to portray any character purely American, without the risk of displaying characteristics which have been sketched by more skilful hands. The outside of the man, however, affords greater scope than the inside; for Americans are by no means always long, thin, sinewy fellows, as they are too frequently represented; and the man who now spoke was a specimen of a very different kind. He might be five feet five or six in height, and was anything but corpulent; yet he was, in chest and shoulders, as broad as a bull; and though the lower limbs were more lightly formed than the upper, yet the legs, as well as the arms, displayed the strong, rounded muscles swelling forth at every movement. His hair was as black as jet, without the slightest mixture of grey, though he could not be less than fifty-four or fifty-five years of age; and his face, which was handsome, with features somewhat eagle-like, was browned, by exposure, to a colour nearly resembling that of mahogany. With his shaggy bear-skin cap, well worn, and a frock of deer-skin, with the hair on, descending to the knees, he looked more like a bison or bonassus than anything human; and, expecting to hear him roar, one was surprised to trace tones soft and gentle, though rather nasal, to such a rude and rugged form.

While Walter carried his basket of fish to the kitchen, and Mr. Prevost's guest was gazing at the stranger, in whom Edith seemed to recognize an acquaintance, the master of the house himself appeared from behind the latter, saying, as he came,--

"Let me make you acquainted with Mr. Brooks; Major Kielmansegge--Captain Jack Brooks."

"Pooh, pooh, Prevost," exclaimed the other. "Call me by my right name. I war Captain Brooks long agone. I'm new christened, and called Woodchuck now--that's because I burrow, major. Them Ingians are wonderful circumdiferous; but they have found that, when they try tricks with me, I can burrow under them; and so they call me Woodchuck, 'cause it's a burrowing sort of a beast."

"I do not exactly understand you," replied the gentleman who had been called Major Kielmansegge; "what is the exact meaning of circumdiferous?"

"It means just circumventing like," answered the Woodchuck. "First and foremost, there's many of the Ingians--the Aloquin, for a sample--that never tell a word of truth. No, no, not they. One of them told me so plainly, one day: 'Woodchuck,' says he, 'Ingian seldom tell truth; he know better than that. Truth too good a thing to be used every day: keep that for time of need.' I believe, at that precious moment, he spoke the truth, the first time for forty years."

The announcement that breakfast was ready interrupted the explanation of Captain Brooks, but appeared to afford him great satisfaction; and, at the meal, he certainly ate more than all the rest of the party put together, consuming everything set before him with a voracity truly marvellous. He seemed, indeed, to think some apology necessary for his furious appetite.

"You see, major," he said, as soon as he could bring himself to a pause sufficiently long to utter a whole sentence, "I eat well when I do eat; for sometimes I get nothing for three or four days together. When I get to a lodge like this, I take in stores for my next voyage, as I can't tell what port I shall touch at again."

"Pray do you anticipate a long cruise just now?" asked the stranger.

"No, no," answered the other, laughing; "but I always prepare against the worst. I am just going up the Mohawk, for a step or two, to make a trade with some of my friends of the Five Nations--the Iroquois, as the French folks call them. But I shall trot up afterwards to Sandy Hill and Fort Lyman, to see what is to be done there in the way of business. Fort Lyman I call it still, though it should be Fort Edward now; for, after the brush with Dieskau, it has changed its name. Ay, that was a sharp affair, major. You'd ha' like to bin there, I guess."

"Were you there, captain?" asked Mr. Prevost. "I did not know you had seen so much service."

"Sure I was," answered Woodchuck, with a laugh; "though, as to service, I did more than I was paid for, seeing I had no commission. I'll tell you how it war, Prevost: just in the beginning of September--it was the seventh or eighth, I think, in the year afore last, that is seventeen fifty-five--I was going up to the head of the lake to see if I could not get some peltry, for I had been unlucky down westward, and had made a bargain in Albany I did not like to break. Just on the top o' the hill, near where the King's road comes down to the ford, who should I stumble upon amongst the trees, but old Hendrik, as they called him--why, I can't tell--the Sachem of the Tortoise totem of the Mohawks. He was there with three young men at his feet; but we were always good friends, he and I, and, over and above, I carried the calumet, so there was no danger. Well, we sat down and had a talk, and he told me that the general--that is, Sir William, as he is now--had dug up the tomahawk, and was encamped near Fort Lyman to give battle to You-non-de-yoh--that is to say, in their jargon, the French governor. He told me, too, that he was on his way to join the general, but that he did not intend to fight, but only to witness the brave deeds of the Corlear's men--that is to say, the English. He was a cunning old fox, old Hendrik, and I fancied from that, he thought we should be defeated. But when I asked him, he said no, that it was all on account of a dream he had had, forbidding him to fight, on the penalty of his scalp. So I told him I was minded to go with him and see the fun. Well, we mustered, before the sun was quite down, well nigh upon three hundred Mohawks, all beautiful painted and feathered; but they told me that they had not sung their war song, nor danced their war dance, before they left their lodges, so I could see well enough they had no intention to fight, and the tarnation devil wouldn't make 'em. How could we get to the camp where they were all busy throwing breastworks, and we heard that Dieskau was coming down from Hunter's in force? The next morning early, we were told that he had turned back again from Fort Lyman, and Johnson sent out Williams with seven or eight hundred men to get hold of his haunches. I tried hard to get old Hendrik to go along, for I stuck fast by my Ingians, knowing the brutes can be serviceable when you trust them. But the Sachem only grunted and did not stir. In an hour and a half we heard a mighty large rattle of muskets, and the Ingians could not stand the sound quietly, but began looking at their rifle-flints and fingering their tomahawks. Howsever, they did not stir, and old Hendrik sat as grave and as brown as an old hemlock stump. Then we saw another party go out of camp to help the first; but in a very few minutes they came running back with Dieskau at their heels. In they tumbled, over the breastworks, head over heels any how; and a pretty little considerable quantity of fright they brought with them. If Dieskau had charged straight on that minute, we should have all been smashed to everlasting flinders; and I don't doubt, no more than that a beear's a crittar, that Hendrik and his painted devils would have had as many English scalps as French ones.

"But Dieskau, like a stupid coon, pulled up short two hundred yards off, and Johnson did not give him much time to look about him, for he poured all the cannon-shot that he had got into him as hard as he could pelt. Well, the French Ingians--and there was a mighty sight of them--did not like that game of ball, and they squattered off to the right and left--some into the trees, some into the swamps; and I couldn't stand it no longer, but up with my rifle, and give them all I had to give, and old Hendrik, seeing how things was like to go, took to the right end too, but a little too fast; for the old devil came into him, and he must needs have scalps. So out he went with the rest; and just as he had got his forefinger in the hair of a young Frenchman, whiz came a bullet into his dirty red skin, and down he went like an old moose. Some twenty of his Ingians got shot too; but, in the end, Dieskau had to run.

"Johnson was wounded too; and then folks have since said that he had no right to the honour of the battle, but that it was Lyman's, who took the command when he could fight no longer. But that's all trash. Dieskau had missed his chance, and all his irregulars were sent skimming by the first fire long afore Johnson was hit. Lyman had nothing to do but hold what Johnson left him, and pursue the enemy. The first he did well enough; but the second he forgot to do--though he was a brave man and a good soldier, for all that."

This little narrative seemed to give matter for thought both to Mr. Prevost and his English guest; and, after a moment or two of somewhat gloomy consideration, the latter asked the narrator whether the friendly Indians had, on that occasion, received any special offence to account for their unwillingness to give active assistance to their allies, or whether their indifference proceeded merely from a fickle or treacherous disposition.

"A little of both," replied Captain Brooks. And after leaning his great broad forehead on his hand for a moment or two, in deep thought, he proceeded to give his view of the relations of the colonies with the Iroquois, in a manner and tone totally different from any he had used before. They were grave and almost stern; and his language had few, if any, of the coarse provincialisms with which he ordinarily seasoned his conversation.

"They are a queer people, the Indians," he said, "and not so much savages as we are inclined to believe them. Sometimes I am ready to think that in one or two points they are more civilized than ourselves. They have not got our arts and sciences; and, as they possess no books, one set of them cannot store up the knowledge they gain in their own time to be added to by every generation of them that come after; and we all know that things which are sent down from mouth to mouth are soon lost or corrupted. But they are always thinking, and they have a calmness and a coolness in their thoughts that we white men very often want. They are quick enough in action when once they have determined upon a thing, and for perseverance they beat all the world; but they take a long time to consider before they act, and it is really wonderful how quietly they do consider, and how steadily they stick in consideration to all their own old notions.

"We have not treated them well, sir; and we never did. They have borne a great deal, and they will bear more still; yet they feel and know it, and some day they may make us feel it too. They have not the wit to take advantage at present of our divisions, and, by joining together themselves, make us feel all their power; for they hate each other worse than they hate us. But, if the same spirit were to take the whole red men, that got hold of the Five Nations many a long year ago, and they were to band together against the whites, as those Five Nations did against the other tribes, they'd give us a great deal of trouble; and though we might thrash them at first, we might teach them to thrash us in the end.

"As it is, however, you see there are two sets of Indians and two sets of white men in this country, each as different from the other as anything can be. The Indians don't say, as they ought, 'The country is ours, and we will fight against all the whites till we drive them out;' but they say, 'The whites are wiser and stronger than we are, and we will help those of them who are wisest and strongest.'

"I don't mean to say that they have not got their likings and dislikings, or that they are not moved by kindness, or by being talked to; for they are great haters, and great likers. Still what I have said is at the bottom of all their friendships with white men. The Dutchmen helped the Five Nations--Iroquois, as the French call them--gave them rifles and gunpowder against their enemies, and taught them to believe they were a very strong people. So the Five Nations liked the Dutch, and made alliance with them. Then came the English, and proved stronger than the Dutch, and the Five Nations attached themselves to the English.

"They have stuck fast to us for a long time, and would not go from us without cause. If they could help to keep us great and powerful they would, and I don't think a little adversity would make them turn. But to see us whipped and scalped would make them think a good deal, and they won't stay long by a people they don't respect.

"They have got their own notions, too, about faith and want of faith. If you are quite friendly with them--altogether--out and out--they'll hold fast enough to their word with you; but a very little turning, or shaking, or doubting, will make them think themselves free from all engagements; and then take care of your scalp-lock. If I am quite sure, when I meet an Indian, that, as the good Book says, 'my heart is right with his heart;' that I have never cheated him, or thought of cheating him; that I have not doubted him, nor do doubt him--I can lie down and sleep in his lodge as safe as if I was in the heart of Albany. But I should not sleep a wink if I knew there was the least little bit of insincerity in my own heart; for they are as 'cute as serpents, and they are not people to wait for explanations. Put your wit against theirs at the back of the forest, and you'll get the worse of it."

"But have we cheated, or attempted to cheat, these poor people?" asked the stranger.

"Why, the less we say about that the better, major," replied Woodchuck, shaking his head. "They have had to bear a good deal; and now when the time comes that we look as if we were going to the wall, perhaps they may remember it."

"But I hope and trust we are not exactly going to the wall," pursued the other, with his colour somewhat heightened; "there has been a great deal said in England about mismanagement of our affairs on this continent; but I have always thought, being no very violent politician myself, that party spirit dictated criticisms which were probably unjust."

"There has been mismanagement enough, major," replied Woodchuck; "hasn't there, Prevost?"

"I fear so, indeed," replied his host with a sigh; "but quite as much on the part of the colonial authorities as on that of the government at home."

"And whose fault is that?" demanded Woodchuck, somewhat warmly; "why, that of the government at home too! Why do they appoint incompetent men? Why do they appoint ignorant men? Why do they exclude from every office of honour, trust, or emolument the good men of the provinces, who know the situation and the wants and the habits of the provinces, and put over us men who, if they were the best men in the world, would be inferior, from want of experience, to our own people, but who are nothing more than a set of presuming, ignorant, grasping blood-suckers, who are chosen because they are related to a minister, or a minister's mistress, or perhaps his valet, and whose only object is to make as much out of us as they can, and then get back again. I do not say that they are all so, but a great many of them are; and this is an insult and an injury to us."

He spoke evidently with a good deal of heat; but his feelings were those of a vast multitude of the American colonists, and those feelings were preparing the way for a great revolution.

"Come, come, Woodchuck," exclaimed Walter Prevost with a laugh, "you are growing warm; and when you are angry, you bite. The major wants to hear your notions of the state of the English power here, and not your censure of the king's government."

"God bless King George!" cried Woodchuck warmly, "and send him all prosperity. There's not a more loyal man in the land than I am; but it vexes me all the more to see his ministers throwing away his people's hearts, and losing his possessions into the bargain. But I'll tell you how it is, major--at least how I think it is--and then you'll see.

"I must first go back a bit. Here are we, the English, in the middle of North America, and we have got the French on both sides of us. Well, we have a right to the country all the way across the continent--and we must have it, for it is our only safety. But the French don't want us to be safe, and so they are trying to get behind us, and push us into the sea. They have been trying it a long time, and we have taken no notice. They have pushed their posts from Canidy, right along by the Wabash and the Ohio, from Lake Erie to the Mississippi; and they have built forts, won over the Ingians, drawing a string round us, which they will tighten every day, unless we cut it.

"And what have the ministers been doing all the time? Why, for a long time they did nothing at all. First, the French were suffered boldly to call the country their own, and to carry off our traders and trappers, and send them into Canidy, and never a word said by our people. Then they built fort after fort, till troops can march and goods can go, with little or no trouble, from Quebec to New Orleans; and all that this produced was a speech from Governor Hamilton, and a message from Governor Dinwiddie. The last, indeed, sent to England, and made representations; but all he got was an order to repel force by force, if he could, but to be quite sure that he did so on the undoubted territories of King George.

"Undoubted! Why, the French made the doubt, and then took advantage of it. Dinwiddie, however, had some spirit, and, with what help he could get, he began to build a fort himself, in the best-chosen spot of the whole country, just by the meeting of the Ohio and the Monongahela. But he had only one man to the French ten, and not a regular company amongst them. So the French marched with a thousand soldiers, and plenty of cannon and stores, turned his people out, took possession of his half-finished fort, and completed it themselves. That was not likely to make the Ingians respect us.

"Well, then, Colonel Washington, the Virginian, and the best man in the land, built Fort Necessity; but they left him without forces to defend it, and he was obliged to surrender to Villiers, and a force big enough to eat him up. That did not raise us with our redskins; and a French force never moved without a whole herd of Ingians, supposed to be in friendship with us, but ready to scalp us whenever we were defeated.

"Then came Braddock's mad march upon Fort Duquesne, where he and a'most all who was with him were killed by a handful of Ingians amongst the bushes--fifteen hundred men dispersed, killed, and scalped, by not four hundred savages--all the artillery taken, and baggage beyond count--think of that! Then Shirley made a great parade of marching against Fort Niagara; but he turned back almost as soon as he set out; and, had it not been for some good luck, on the north side of Massachusetts Bay, and the victory of Johnson over Dieskau, you would not have had a tribe hold fast to us. They were all wavering as fast as they could--I could see that, as plain as possible, from old Hendrik's talk; and the French Jesuits were in amongst them day and night to bring the Five Nations over. This was the year afore last.

"Well, what did they do last year? Nothing at all, but lose Oswego. Lord Loudun, and Abercrombie, and Webb, marched and countermarched, and consulted, and played the fool, while bloody Montcalm was besieging Mercer, taking Oswego, breaking the terms he had expressly granted, and suffering his Ingians to scalp and torture his prisoners of war before his eyes. Well, this was just about the middle of August; but it was judged too late to do anything more, and nothing was done. There was merry work in Albany, and people danced and sang; but the Ingians got a strange notion that the English lion was better at roaring than he was at biting.

"And now, major, what have we done this year to make up for all the blunders of the last five or six? Why, Lord Loudun stripped the whole of this province of its men and guns, to go to Halifax and attack Louisburg. When he got to Halifax, he exercised his men for a month, heard a false report that Louisburg was too strong and too well prepared to be taken, and sailed back to New York. In the meanwhile, Montcalm took Fort William Henry on Lake George, and, as usual, let the garrison be butchered by his Ingians.

"So, now the redskins see that the English arms are contemptible on every part of this continent, and the French complete masters of the lakes and the whole western country. The Five Nations see their long house open to our enemies on three sides, and not a step taken to give them assistance or protection. We have abandoned them. Can you expect them not to abandon us?"

The young officer, long before this painful question was asked, had leaned his elbows on the table, and covered his eyes and part of his face with his hand. Walter and Edith both gazed at him earnestly, while their father bent his eyes gloomily down on the table, all three knowing and sympathizing with the feelings of a British officer while listening to such a detail. The expression of his countenance they could not see; but the finely-cut ear, appearing from beneath the curls of his hair, glowed like fire before the speaker finished.

He did not answer, however, for more than a minute; but then, raising his head, with a look of stern gravity, he replied,--

"I cannot expect it. I cannot even understand how they have remained attached to us so long and so much."

"The influence of one man has done a great deal," replied Mr. Prevost. "Sir William Johnson is what is called the Indian agent; and, whatever may be thought of his military abilities, there can be no doubt that the Iroquois trust him, and love him more than they have ever trusted or loved a white man before. He is invariably just towards them, always keeps his word with them; he never yields to importunity or refuses to listen to reason; and he places that implicit confidence in them which enlists everything that is noble in the Indian character in his favour. Thus, in his presence, and in their dealings with him, they are quite a different people from what they are with others--all their fine qualities are brought into action, and all their wild passions are stilled."

"I should like to see them as they really are," exclaimed the young officer, eagerly. And then, turning to Woodchuck, he said--"You tell me you are going amongst them, my friend; can you not take me with you?"

"Wait three days and I will," replied the other. "I am first going up the Mohawk, as I told you, close by Sir William's castle and hall, as he calls the places. You'd see little there; but, if you will promise to do just as I tell you, and mind advice, I'll take you up to Sandy Hill and the creek, where you'll see enough of them. That will be arter I come back on Friday about noon."

Mr. Prevost looked at the young officer, and he at his entertainer; and then the former said--

"When will you bring him back, captain? He must be here again by next Tuesday night."

"That he shall be, with or without his scalp," answered Woodchuck, with a laugh. "You get him ready to go; for you know, Prevost, the forest is not the parade-ground."

"I will lend him my Gakaah and Gischa and Gostoweh," cried Walter. "We will make him quite an Indian."

"No, no!" answered Woodchuck, "that won't do, Walter. The man who tries to please an Ingian by acting like an Ingian makes naught of it. They know it's a cheat, and they don't like it. We have our ways, and they have theirs; and let each keep their own, like honest men. So I think, and so the Ingians think. Putting on a lion's skin will never make a man a lion. Get the major some good tough leggins, and a coat that won't tear; a rifle and an axe and a wood-knife--a bottle of brandy is no bad thing. But don't forget a calumet and a pouch of tobacco, for both may be needful. So now good-bye to ye all. I must trot."

Thus saying, he rose from the table, and, without more ceremonious adieu, left the room.

[CHAPTER VI.]

"How sweet she looks!" exclaimed a man of nearly my own age--a man most distinguished in his own land--as we gazed on a young and lovely girl, near and dear to us both as our own child--soon to become my child-in-law as she already is in affection. "How sweet she looks!"

The words set me thinking. What was it in which that sweetness consisted? Sweetness as of the song of a bird, or the ambrosial breathing of a flower--sweetness as of an entrancing melody, which had its solemn sadness as well as its delight--sweetness which carried the soul on its wings of perfume into the far future, to gather in the land of dreams, with the trembling awe of fear-touched hope, the mystic signs of her future destiny. It consisted not in the lovely lines of the features, in the exquisite hues of the complexion, in the beautiful symmetry of the form. But it consisted in that nameless, unphonetic, but ever lucid, hieroglyph of the heart--expression--expression in form as well as in face--in tranquillity as well as in movement--in the undefined and undefinable beauty of beauties--grace.

"La grace encore plus belle que la beauté."

Grace which no art can ever attain, though it may imitate. Grace which is the gift of God to the body, to the mind, to the spirit. Grace which, in our pristine state, was, doubtless, common to all the three, blending taste, and reason, and religion in one harmony almost divine--breathing forth from the earthly form in the image of its Maker, and which lingers yet, and breathes forth still, in the pure and the innocent and the bright.

Such grace was in Edith Prevost; and hard or preoccupied must have been the heart that could resist it. She was certainly very beautiful, too, and of that beauty the most attractive. Though so young, her fully-developed form left maturity but little to add; and every swelling line flowed into the other with symmetry the most perfect. The rich, warm, glossy curls of her nut-brown hair, unstained and unrestrained by any of the frightful conceits of the day, wantoned round her ivory forehead in lines all in harmony with her figure and her features, and in hue contrasting, yet harmonizing, with her complexion, in its soft, rich warmth; fair, yet glowing with a hardly perceptible shade of brown, such as that which distinguishes the Parian marble from the stone of Carrara. Then her liquid, hazel eyes, full of ever-varied expression--now sparkling with gay, free joy, now full of tender light (especially when they turned upon her father), and now shaded with a sleepy sort of thoughtfulness, when one of her day-dreams fell upon her. There was something, moreover, in her manner--in her whole demeanour--which lent another charm to beauty, and added grace to grace. Yet it was of a kind difficult to define. I cannot describe it; I can only tell how she came by it.

I have shown that, in early years, she had been educated in a land where civilization and refinement were carried to their highest point; but it is necessary to add, that her education there had been conducted in the midst of the most refined society of that land, and by those in whom refinement had been a quality rather than an acquisition. She had it, too, as an hereditary right: it was in her blood and in her nature; and, until she was nearly fourteen years of age, everything that father or mother could do was done to cultivate the rich soil of her mind and her heart--remember, to cultivate, not to alter: it needed no change. Every natural grace remained entire, and many a bright gift was added.

Then suddenly she was transplanted to a scene where all was wild--where there were no conventionalities--where Nature ruled, and was the rule. She came there exactly at the age when, without losing one particle of that which society could confer that was worth retaining, the mind--the fresh, young mind--was ready to receive a peculiar tone from the wild things around her, a freedom, an innocent carelessness of the trifles magnified into false importance in a more artificial state. Feeling, knowing, that she was a lady, that every thought was pure and bright, that every purpose was noble and true, she had no fear of infringing small proprieties; she had no thought of that dread bugbear of the multitude, "what the world would say." Thus, while habit rendered all refined, and while heart and innocence gave dignity and calmness, she had all the free, frank, heartful confidence of untutored nature.

Such was Edith Prevost, and such she appeared to the stranger who had visited her father's house. At first, perhaps, he did not comprehend her fully; but he was a man of keen perceptions and a great and noble heart. Within his breast and hers were those sympathies which are keys to open the doors of character; and he had not been four-and-twenty hours under the same roof before he knew her, and appreciated her entirely. He had seen much of the world, much of society; and perhaps that which is false and wrong therein had been over-estimated by a mind somewhat too clear-sighted for much happiness. At all events, he had passed through life hitherto heart-whole and untouched with love; and he felt fearless and confident from the experience of security. Thus he boldly made the character of Edith a study; scanned it accurately, watched every little trait, dwelt upon her beauty and her grace, and took pleasure in eliciting all that was bright and lovely. Imprudent man! He had never met any one like her before.

She, too, in unconscious frankness, without thought or design, was led on, by new and fresh association, to open all the treasures of her mind to her new friend, not knowing how they might dazzle; and her brother and her father both aided, unthinkingly, in the same course.

When Brooks had left them, half an hour was spent in one of those pleasant after-breakfast dreams, when the mind seems to take a moment's hesitating pause before grappling with the active business of the day. But little was said; each gazed forth from window or from door--each thought, perhaps, of the other, and each drank in sweet sensation from the scene before the eyes.

Each thought of the other, I have said; and when such is the case, how infinite are the varieties into which thought moulds itself!

Walter paused and pondered upon the stranger's state and objects; asked himself who he was; what could be his errand; how, why, he came thither. Major Kielmansegge he knew him not to be. A chance word had shown him not only his rank and station, but had shown also that there was a secret to be kept--a secret to which his imagination, perhaps, lent more importance than it deserved. He was an English peer, the young man knew, one of a rank with which, in former years, he had been accustomed to mingle, and for which, notwithstanding all that had passed, and lapse of time, and varied circumstances, he retained an habitual veneration. But what could have led a British peer to that secluded spot? what could be the circumstances which, having led him thither, had suddenly changed his purpose of proceeding onward, and induced him to remain a guest in his father's cottage, in a state of half-concealment? Could it be Lord Loudun, he asked himself, the commander-in-chief of the royal forces, whose conduct had been so severely censured in his own ears by the man just gone?

Youth always leaves a thousand things out of calculation, and darts at its conclusions with rapidity that overleaps the real end; and thus, what with the military bearing, the secrecy, a certain degree of reserve of manner, and an air of command, he argued himself into the belief that their guest was certainly the general of whom they had heard so much and knew so little; without at all considering how unlikely it was, that so important a command should be intrusted to one so young. It did not, indeed, raise the stranger in his esteem, or in his regard, to believe him to be Lord Loudun; for this nobleman had not won the goodwill of the people of the province, nor secured their approbation. They had perhaps expected too much from his coming, and had been bitterly disappointed by the result.

Edith thought of his rank and station not at all. Some of his words lingered in her ear, and afforded matter for the mind to work with. They were not such as she had heard for long. They were different even, in some respects, from any that she remembered. There was nothing light in them, nothing frivolous; but, combined with the tone and manner, they gave the impression that they sprang from a mind deep, powerful, self-relying, cultivated and enriched by study and observation, and full of activity and eagerness. She might inquire what sort of heart was united with that mind; she might be doubtful of it; for she had not much experience, and she knew not how often men, in mere sport, or to elicit the shy secrets of woman's heart, or for idle vanity or light caprice, utter that which they do not feel, affect a character they do not possess, and often inferior to their own.

She did not make up her mind hastily, however. Indeed she had not yet sufficient interest in the object of her thoughts to care much about making up her mind at all. She thought him a very handsome and a very agreeable man, sufficiently odd, or different from the common run, to excite some interest, yet with an oddity in no degree offensive; but that was all. She knew that he had only come for a day, and that, though some accidental meeting with Sir William Johnson had induced him to protract his stay, it would probably only be for a day or two longer. Then he would go: his shadow would pass away from the floor, and his memory from her mind--she thought.

Accident! Who is there that believes in accident? On my life, it requires more faith to conceive such a thing as accident than to believe in the divinity of Juggernaut. The only reason why any man can imagine such a thing, is because he sees not the causes which bring to pass the event which he calls an accident; and yet he perceives the hands of a clock move round the dial, without beholding the springs and wheels, and never dreams it is by accident that the bell chimes noon. Let any man look through the strange concatenation of event with event, through the course of his own life, and dream of accident, if he can.

It was not by accident that Lord H---- and Edith

Prevost met there. It was for the working out of their mutual destiny, under the will of God; for, if there be a God, there is a special Providence.

"This is very lovely, Miss Prevost," said the young soldier, when the long meditative lapse was drawing to a close; "but I should think the scene would become somewhat monotonous. Hemmed in by these woods, the country round, though beautiful in itself, must pall upon the taste."

"Oh, no!" cried Edith, eagerly; "it is full of variety. Each day affords something new; and every morning's walk displays a thousand fresh beauties. Let us go and take a ramble, if you have nothing better to do, and I will soon show you there is no monotony. Come, Walter, take your rifle and go with us. Father, this is not your hour. Can you never come before the sun has passed his height, and see the shadows fall the other way?"

"Mine is the evening hour, my child," answered Mr. Prevost, somewhat sadly; "but go, Edith, and show our noble friend the scenes you so much delight in. He will need something to make his stay in this dull place somewhat less heavy."

The stranger made no complimentary reply, for his thoughts were busy with Edith, and he was, at that moment, comparing her frank, unconscious, undesigning offer to lead him through love-like woods and glades with the wily hesitations of a court coquette.

"Perhaps you are not disposed to walk?" said Edith, marking his reverie, and startling him from it.

"I shall be delighted," he said, eagerly, and truly, too. "You must forgive me for being somewhat absent, Miss Prevost. Your father knows I have much to think of, though, indeed, thought at present is vain; and you will confer a boon by banishing that idle but importunate companion."

"Oh, then, you shall not think at all while you are with me," returned Edith, smiling.

And away she ran, to cover her head with one of those black wimples very generally worn by the women of that day.

[CHAPTER VII.]

Let us see what can be made out of a walk. It began with a bad number, though one that is generally assumed to be lucky. But, on the present occasion, no one felt himself the third; and Walter, and Edith, and Lord H----, conversed as freely as if only two had been present. First came a discussion between Edith and her brother as to what path they should take; and then they referred it to their companion, and he, with a smile, reminded them that he knew none but that by which he had come thither; and so Edith had her own way, and led towards the west.

By dint of labour and taste, aided, in some degree, by accident, not less than fifty acres of ground had been cleared around the house of Mr. Prevost--not partially cleared, with large black stumps of trees sticking up in the fields, and assuming every sort of strange form, all hideous; but perfectly and entirely, leaving the ground (some part of which had, indeed, been free of forest when Mr. Prevost first settled there) smooth and trim as that of the fair farms of England. The fences, too, were all in good order, and the buildings neat and picturesque.

Beyond the cultivated ground, as you descended the gentle hill, lay the deep forest, at the distance of about three hundred yards; and at its edge Edith paused, and made her companion turn to see how beautiful the cottage looked upon its eminence, shaded by gorgeous maple-trees, in their gold and crimson garb of autumn, with a tall rock or two, grey and mossy, rising up amidst them.

Lord H---- gazed at the house, and saw that it was picturesque and beautiful--very different, indeed, from any other dwelling he had beheld on the western side of the Atlantic; but his eyes expressed an absent thoughtfulness, and Edith thought he did not admire it half enough.

Close by the spot where she had stopped appeared the entrance of a broad road, cut, probably, by the Dutch settlers many years before. It could not be called good, for it was furrowed and indented with many a rut and hollow, and roughened by obtrusive stones and rock; but there were no stumps of trees upon it, no fallen trunks lying across, which, for a forest road in America, at that time, was rare perfection. For about a quarter of a mile it was bordered on each side by tangled thicket, with gigantic pine-trees rising out of an impenetrable mass of underwood, in which berries of many a hue supplied the place of flowers. But flowers seem hardly wanting to an American autumn; for almost every leaf becomes a flower, and the whole forest glows with all the hues of yellow, red, and green, from the soft primrose-colour of the fading white-wood and sycamore, through every tint of orange, scarlet, and crimson on the maple, and of yellow and green on the larch, the pine, and the hemlock.

"How strange are man's prejudices and prepossessions!" ejaculated Lord H----, as they paused to gaze at a spot where a large extent of woodland lay open to the eye below them. "We are incredulous of everything we have not seen, or to the conception of which we have not been led by very near approaches. Had any one shown me, before I reached these shores, a picture of an autumn scene in America, though it had been perfect as a portrait, hue for hue, or even inferior in its striking colouring to the reality, I should have laughed at it as a most extravagant exaggeration. Did not the first autumn you passed here make you think yourself in fairy-land?"

"No; I was prepared for it," replied Edith; "my father had described the autumn scenery to me often before we came."

"Then was he ever in America before he came to settle?" asked her companion.

"Yes, once," answered Edith. She spoke in a very grave tone, and then ceased suddenly.

But her brother took the subject up with a boy's frankness, saying--"Did you never hear that my grandfather and my father's sister both died in Virginia? He was in command there, and my father came over just before my birth."

"It is a long story, and a sad one, my lord," interposed Edith, with a sigh; "but look now as we mount the hill, how the scene changes. Every step upon the hill-side gives us a different sort of tree, and the brush disappears from amidst the trunks. This grove is my favourite evening seat, where I can read and think under the broad shady boughs, with nothing but beautiful sights around me."

They had reached a spot where, upon the summit of an eminence, numbers of large oaks crested the forest. Wide apart, and taller than the English oak, though not so large in stem, the trees suffered the eye to wander over the grassy ground, somewhat broken by rock, which sloped down between hundreds of large bolls to the tops of the lower forest trees, and thence to a scene of almost matchless beauty beyond. Still slanting downwards with a gentle sweep, the woodlands were seen approaching the banks of a small lake, about two miles distant, while, beyond the sheet of water, which lay glittering like gold in the clear morning sunshine, rose up high purple hills, with the shadows of grand clouds floating over them. Around the lake, on every side, were rocky promontories and slanting points of lower land jutting out into the water; and, where they stood above, they could see all the fair features of the scene itself, and the images of the clouds and sky redoubled by the golden mirror. To give another charm to the spot, and make ear and eye combine in enjoyment, the voices of distant waters came upon the breeze, not with a roar exactly, but with rather more than a murmur, showing that some large river was pouring over a steep not far away.

"Hark!" ejaculated Lord H----. "Is there a waterfall near?"

"Too far to go to it to-day," answered Edith. "We must economize our scenes, lest we should exhaust them all before you go, and you should think more than ever that our country wants variety."

"I cannot think so with that prospect before my eyes," replied the young nobleman. "Look how it has changed already! The mountain is all in shade, and so is the lake; but those low, wavy, wood-covered hills, which lie between the two, are starting out in the prominence of sunshine. A truly beautiful scene is full of variety in itself. Every day changes its aspect, every hour, every season. The light of morning, and evening, and mid-day, alters it entirely; and the spring and the summer, the autumn and the winter, robe it in different hues. I have often thought that a fair landscape is like a fine mind, in which every varying event of life brings forth new beauties."

"Alas, that the mind is not always like the landscape!" exclaimed Edith. "God willed it so, I doubt not, for there is harmony in all His works; but man's will and God's will are not always one."

"Perhaps, after all," said her companion, thoughtfully, "the best way to keep them in harmony is for man, as much as may be, to recur to Nature, which is but an expression of God's will."

"Oh yes!" cried Walter Prevost, eagerly; "I am sure the more we give ourselves up to the factitious and insincere contrivances of what we call society, the more we alienate ourselves from truth and God."

The young nobleman gazed at him with a smile almost melancholy.

"Very young," he thought, "to come to such sad conclusions. But do you not, my friend Walter," added he aloud, "think there might be such a thing as extracting from society all that is good and fine in it, and leaving the chaff and dross for others? The simile of the bee and the poisonous flower holds good with man. Let us take what is sweet and beneficial in all we find growing in the world's garden, and reject all that is worthless, poisonous, and foul. But truly this is an enchanting scene. It wants, methinks, only the figure of an Indian in the foreground. And there comes one, I fancy, to fill up the picture.--Stay, stay, we shall want no rifles. It is but a woman coming through the trees."

"It is Otaitsa--it is the Blossom!" cried Edith and Walter in a breath, as they looked forward to a spot where, across the yellow sunshine as it streamed through the trees, a female figure, clad in the gaily-embroidered and brightly-coloured gakaah or petticoat of the Indian women, was seen advancing with a rapid yet somewhat doubtful step.

Without pause or hesitation, Edith sprang forward to meet the new comer, and, in a moment after, the beautiful arms of the Indian girl who had sat with Walter in the morning were round the fair form of his sister, and her lips pressed on hers. There was a warmth and eagerness in their meeting, unusual on the part of the red race; but, while the young Oneida almost lay upon the bosom of her white friend, her beautiful dark eyes were turned towards her lover, as, with a mixture of the bashful feelings of youth and the consciousness of having something to conceal, Walter, with a glowing cheek, lingered a step or two behind his sister.

"Art thou coming to our lodge, dear Blossom?" asked Edith, and then added, "Where is thy father?"

"We both come," answered the girl, in fluent English, with no more of the Indian accent than served to give a peculiar softness to her tones. "I wait the Black Eagle here since dawn of day. He has gone towards the morning, with our father the White Heron; for we heard of Hurons by the side of Corlear, and some thought the hatchet would be unburied; so he journeyed to hear more from our friends by the Horicon, and bade me stay and tell you and our brother Walter to forbear that road if I saw you turn your eyes towards the east wind. He and the White Heron will be by your father's council-fire with the first star."

A good deal of this speech was unintelligible to Lord H----, who had now approached, and on whom Blossom's eyes were turned with a sort of timid and inquiring look. But Walter hastened to interpret, saying--

"She means that her father and the missionary, Mr. Gore, have heard that there are hostile Indians on the shores of Lake Champlain, and have gone down towards Lake George to inquire; for Black Eagle--that is her father--is much our friend, and he always fancies that my father has chosen a dangerous situation here just at the verge of the territory of the Five Nations, or their Long House, as they call it."

"Well, come to the lodge with us, dear Blossom," said Edith, while her brother was giving this explanation; "thou knowest my father loves thee well, and will be glad to have the Blossom with us. Here, too, is an English chief, dwelling with us, who knows not what sweet blossoms grow on Indian trees."

But the girl shook her head, saying--

"Nay, I must do the father's will. It was with much praying that he let me come hither with him; and he bade me stay here from the white rock to the stream. So I must obey."

"But it may be dangerous," replied Edith, "if there be Hurons so near; and it is sadly solitary, dear sister."

"Then stay with me for a while," said the girl, who could not affect to deny that her lonely watch was somewhat gloomy.

"I will stay with her, and protect her," cried Walter eagerly; "for, dearest Blossom, should there be danger, my sister must fly to the lodge."

"Yes, stay with her, Walter. Oh, yes, stay with her," ejaculated the unconscious Edith. And so it was settled, for Otaitsa made no opposition, though, with a cheek in which something glowed warmly through the brown, and with a lip that curled gently with a meaning smile, she said--

"Perhaps my brother Walter would be elsewhere? He may find a long watch wearisome on the hill and in the wood."

Well was it that others were present, or the lips that spoke would have paid for their insincerity. But perhaps the Blossom would not have so spoken had they been alone; for woman feels a fear of playfulness, and knows that it needs a safeguard; while deep passion and pure tenderness seem to have a holy safeguard in themselves, and often in their very weakness find strength.

"Let us stay awhile ourselves," said Lord H----, seating himself on the grass, and gazing forth with a look of interest over the prospect: "methinks this is a place where one may well dream away an hour, without the busiest mind reproaching itself for inactivity."

There was no ceremony certainly in his manner, and yet no assumption. Had there been older persons present, women nearer his own age, perhaps the formal decorums of the time might have put upon him a more ceremonious bearing: he might have asked their wishes--waited till they were seated--bowed, and assisted them to a commodious spot. But Edith was so young, that a feeling of her being almost a child was unconsciously present in his mind--a very dangerous feeling, inasmuch as it put him wholly off his guard; and, acting as plain nature taught, he cast himself down there to enjoy an hour of pleasant idleness, in a beautiful scene, with one too lovely, too deep-toned in mind--ay, too mature in heart and in body--to be so treated with impunity.

That hour passed by, and another came and went, while into his thoughts and into his breast's inmost caves were stealing strange new sensations. A dreamy charm was over him, a golden spell around him, more powerful than Circe ever threw, or the Siren ever sung. Oh, the Lotus!--he was eating the Lotus, that sweet fruit, the magic taste of which could never be forgotten--which was destined thenceforth and for ever to draw him back, with irresistible power, to the spot where it grew.

Surely that nectareous fruit, which transformed the whole spirit into desire for itself, was but an image of love, pure and bright, growing wild upon the bank of the sacred river. And the first taste, too, gave no warning of its power. Thus he was all unconscious of what was coming over him, but yielded himself calmly to the enjoyment of the moment, and imagined that in the next he could be free again in every thought.

The reader may ask--"Was he thus early in love? Had the impassioned haste of Italian love--the love of Romeo and Juliet--flown across the wide Atlantic?"

No! I answer, no. But he was yielding himself to thoughts and feelings, scenes, circumstances, and companionships, which were sure to light it up in his heart--yielding without resistance. He was tasting the Lotus-fruit; and its effects were inevitable.

For two hours the four companions sat there on the hill-side, beneath the tall shady trees, with the wind breathing softly upon them--the lake glittering before their eyes--the murmur of the waterfall sending music through the air. But to the young Englishman these were but accessories. The fair face of Edith was before his eyes, the melody of her voice in his ear.

At length, however, they rose to go, promising to send one of the slaves from the house with food for Walter and Otaitsa at the hour of noon; and Lord H---- and his fair companion took their way back towards the house.

The distance was not very far, but they were somewhat long upon the way. They walked slowly back, and by a different path from that by which they went; and often they stopped to admire some pleasant scene; often Lord H---- had to assist his fair companion over some rock, and her soft hand rested in his. He gathered flowers for her--the fringed gentia and other late blossoms; they paused to examine them closely, and comment on their loveliness. Once he made her sit down beside him on a bank, and tell the names of all the different trees; and from trees his conversation went on into strange, dreamy, indefinite talk of human things and human hearts.

Thus noon was not far distant when they reached the house; and both Edith and her companion were very thoughtful.

[CHAPTER VIII.]

Edith was very thoughtful through the rest of the day. Was it of herself she thought? Was it of him who had been her companion through the greater part of the morning? Hardly at all.

Hast thou not heard, reader, in eastern fable, of springs of deep, clear water, covered from the eye of passing strangers by a sealed stone; and how, when he who has the talismanic secret approaches and says the words of power, or makes the sign, the sealed fountain opens its cool treasure, and the bright stream wells forth? Such is woman's love.

No word had been spoken, no sign had been given; no intimation to make the seal on the fountain indicate that the master of its destiny was near. Edith had had a pleasant ramble with one such as she seldom saw--and that was all. That he was different from the common multitude--higher, brighter, nobler in his thoughts--she had gathered from their short acquaintance; and so far she might be led to think of him somewhat more than she thought of other men. But her meditations had another object; her mind was attracted strongly in another direction.

It is strange how clearly and how willingly women look into the hearts of others--how dimly, how reluctantly they see into their own. There had been something in the manner of her brother Walter, a hesitation, and yet an eagerness, a timidity unnatural, with a warmth that spoke of passion, which had not escaped her eye. In the sweet Indian girl, too, she had seen signs not equivocal: the fluttering blush; the look full of soul and feeling; the glance suddenly raised to the boy's face, and suddenly withdrawn; the eyes full of liquid light, now beaming brightly under sudden emotion, now shaded beneath the long fringe, like the moon behind a passing cloud.

They were signs that Edith did not mistake, and they were for her suggestive of thoughtfulness.

It might tire the reader, were we to trace all the considerations that chased one another through her mind, or to tell how, for the first time--when she thought of her brother wedding an Indian girl, linking his fate for ever to the savages of the woods--she realized the consequences of the solitary life her father had chosen, of the removal from civilization, of the life in the wild forest.

For the first time it seemed to her that a dark, impenetrable curtain was falling between herself and all the ancient things of history; that all, indeed, was to be new, and strange, and different. And yet she loved Otaitsa well, and, in the last two years, had seen many a trait which had won esteem as well as love. The old Black Eagle, as her father was called, had ever been a fast and faithful ally of the English; but to Mr. Prevost he had attached himself in a particular manner. An accidental journey on the part of the old Sachem had first brought them acquainted, and from that day forward the distance of the Oneida settlements was no impediment to their meeting. Whenever the Black Eagle left his lodge, he was sure, in his own figurative language, to wing his flight sooner or later towards the nest of his white brother; and, in despite of Indian habits, he almost invariably brought his daughter with him. When any distant or perilous enterprise was on hand, Otaitsa was left at the lodge of the English family; and many a week she had passed there at a time, loved by, and loving, all its inmates.

It was not there, however, that she had acquired her knowledge of the English tongue, or the other characteristics which distinguished her from the ordinary Indian women. When she first appeared there, she spoke the language of the settlers as perfectly as they did; and it was soon discovered that from infancy she had been under the care and instruction of one of the English missionaries--at that time, alas! few--who had sacrificed all that civilized life could bestow for the purpose of bringing the Indian savage into the fold of Christ.

Nor was it altogether rare in those days to find an Indian woman adopting, to a considerable degree, the habits and manners of the Europeans. The celebrated Queen of Hearts, who played so important a part in the conspiracy of Pontiac, went even further than Otaitsa, for she assumed the garb of the French, while the latter always retained the dress of her own nation, and was proud of her Indian blood. And yet it was with a sort of melancholy pride; for she would frankly acknowledge the superiority of the white race, and the advantage of the civilization which her own people did not possess. It was, perhaps, rather like the clinging affection which binds the noble-hearted to the falling and unfortunate than that vainer sort of pride which fancies a reflected light to fall upon ourselves through connection with the powerful and the prosperous.

Whatever she was--whatever was high and bright in her nature--she was still the Indian maiden; and as such only could Edith look upon her when she thought of the love between her brother and Otaitsa, which had become but too apparent to her eyes.

Then again she asked herself, how should she act towards Walter, towards her father. Could she direct his attention to that which was so evident to her? Oh, no! She felt as if it would be betraying a secret intrusted to her keeping. True, no word had been spoken, no confession made; still they had both unveiled their hearts to eyes they believed friendly, and she would not take advantage of the knowledge so acquired. Her father could and would see, she thought, and he would then judge for himself, and act according to his judgment.

But Edith did not know how little and how rarely men see into such secrets--especially men of studious habits. Mr. Prevost judged it quite right that Walter should stay with Otaitsa, and he even sent out the old slave Agrippa, who, somehow, was famous as a marksman, with a rifle on his shoulder, to act as a sort of scout upon the hill-side, and watch for anything bearing a hostile aspect.

After dinner, too, he walked out himself, and sat for an hour, with his son and the Indian girl, speaking words of affection to her that sank deep into her heart, and more than once brought drops into her bright eyes. No father's tenderness could exceed that he showed her; and Otaitsa felt as if he were almost welcoming her as a daughter.

When Mr. Prevost returned to the house, he gave himself up to conversation with his guest, transporting his spirit far away from the scenes before him to other lands and other times. Matters of taste and art were discussed: the imperishable works of genius, and the triumphs of mind; and, from time to time, the musical tones of Edith's voice mingled with the deeper sounds of her two companions. It was a pleasant afternoon to all, for Mr. Prevost was himself somewhat of a dreamer; and he, or Edith, or both, perhaps, had taught Lord H----, for the time, at least, to be a dreamer also.

Nor were higher topics left untouched. Nowhere so well as in wide solitudes can the spirit feel itself free to deal with its own mighty questions. The pealing organ and the sounding choir may give a devotional tone to the mind; and the tall pillar and the dusty aisle may afford solemnity to the thoughts; but would you have the spirit climb from the heart's small secret chamber towards the footsteps of the throne of God, and bring back some rays of brighter light to illuminate the darkness of our earthly being, choose the temple unprofaned of his own creation; stand and contemplate His might and majesty amidst the solemn woods or on the awful mountain-tops: or gaze with the astronomer at the distant stars, resolving filmy clouds into innumerable worlds, and separating specks of light into suns and systems.