CHAPTER XII. THE INDIAN LEECH.

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The wound of Greyslaer had been given precisely
in the manner described by the panic-struck
fugitive, though both he and De Roos were mistaken
in thinking that their party was surrounded. A
large body of Indians had indeed crossed the river,
under the shelter of the cape or headland, during
the few moments that the moon was obscured; but
this was after De Roos was in full retreat: and the
“skulking savage” who had so alarmed his followers,
as well as the sharpshooter who had subsequently
picked off Greyslaer, and struck a panic into his
party in turn, was no other than the single desperado
who had so gallantly achieved his escape from
the canoe. This formidable warrior—for, as Balt
surmised, it was no other than “old Josey,” or
Thayendanagea himself—was aided by fortune, not
less than by his own address, in escaping the perils
of the night. Foiling by his prowess the ambushed
foes that attempted to seize him, he had, in
the first instance, after breaking from their hands,
struck directly across the neck of the promontory

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as the shortest way to the station. He had nearly
gained the little bay on this side, where he would
take the water to swim to the opposite shore, when,
discovering the position of De Roos's band by
hearing some of the outlyers whispering together,
he made a detour to turn their flank. The gleam
of his rifle soon after betrayed his vicinity to them,
as was indicated by a movement of alarm among
them; and, perceiving that he was observed, he
widened his circuit by striking inland toward the
hill. This route brought him immediately beneath
the projecting ledge whereon Greyslaer was
reclining. Deeming himself now surrounded by
foes, the chieftain thought that it only remained for
him to fight his way through them as best he might;
and when the moon, after being a few moments
obscured by a cloud, shone out, bringing the form
of Greyslaer above him in clear relief against the
sky, Brant discharged his piece and raised the
war-whoop. His fire was returned with a volley
from the bushes, where the whites lay within a few
yards of their officer; but their shot were thrown
away, for the darkness that reigned below the cliff
prevented them from taking aim at their unseen
assailant. The single war-whoop of Brant was the
next moment echoed back by a tumultuous yell
from the nearer side of the river, and the dismayed
borderers, hearing no order from their insensible
leader, concluded that he was slain, and sought their
own safety in instant flight.

The darkness of the woods rendered pursuit ineffectual.
The forest rung for a while with the impatient
yells of an Indian chase, and then, before
an hour had passed away, the lonely whoop of some
solitary savage, hailing his comrades after a reluctant
and disappointed return, was all that met the
ear These last sounds, had Greyslaer had

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sufficient consciousness to comprehend them, would
have told him of the safety of his friends, however
precarious might be his own. The wounded officer,
upon reviving from his swoon, found himself
stretched upon a pile of skins in an Indian wigwam,
with a noble-looking Mohawk, a man of majestic
figure and commanding aspect, standing near, with
eyes bent keenly upon his own. Greyslaer made
a movement as if to lift one of his hands, and was
about to speak, but the Medicine-man—for such the
Indian seemed by the talisman which he wore
around his neck, as well as other emblems and
equipments of the aboriginal leech, or conjuror's
trade, that marked his appearance—motioned the
youth to remain silent and quiet. The sage then,
baring the wound by stripping off some moss or
lichen with which the blood had been temporarily
stanched, proceeded to dress it. This he did, with
the assistance of a withered old squaw, who stood
by, holding the various preparations in her hands,
while ever and anon she bowed reverently to the
muttered charm of the operator. When this part of
his medical treatment was carefully completed, the
magician administered a draught with the same solemn
and superstitious ceremonial; and his patient
soon after slept.

The slumberg of Greyslaer must have been long
and refreshing, for he found himself so much revived
upon awaking as to feel a disposition to rise.
But upon the first indication of such an intention,
his ears were saluted by a shrill and discordant cry
from the old squaw, who sat crouched among the
ashes, watching a brazen kettle, into which from
time to time she cast certain roots and herbs, muttering
some gibberish to herself the while. Her
call was answered from without by a gruff “umph,”
as of some voice chiding her shrewish cry; and

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straightway the mat which formed the only door of
the lodge was raised, and the benignant features of
the Medicine-man were seen at the entrance. He
advanced to the couch of Greyslaer, and placing
his hand upon the forehead of his patient, while he
gazed upon him thoughtfully for some moments,
seemed to be at length thoroughly satisfied with the
results of his treatment thus far, for straightway he
began to engage him in conversation, speaking
English at the same time with an ease and fluency
that astonished the soldier-student.

“The Spirit hath not yet need of thee in another
land, young man. He leaves thee here yet
a while, to repent of thy wickedness in aiding to
drive his red children from their country.”

“I drive them? I love the Indians!” said Greyslaer,
with spirit. “It is only those who make
themselves the slaves of a foreign king, to aid in
enchaining my countrymen. It is only the murderous
Brant and his renegade crew upon whom I
would make war.”

“Darest thou, young man, speak thus of the great
Thayendanagea? and yet it fits thy presumptuous
years to pass in judgment upon the deeds of a sachem
who hath sat in council with the wisest of thy
race.”

“The great Thayendanagea!” scornfully repeated
Max. “A presumptuous half-breed! whose
demi-barbarous vanity has been tickled by sharing
in the mummery of European courts. A degenerate
hound, that has exchanged the noble instincts
of his forest training for the dainty tricks of a parlour-bred
spaniel. He sit in council! the poor tool
of profligate Tory partisans, who will use him to
enslave his people when they have destroyed mine.”

The eyes of the Medicine-man shot fire as
Greyslaer, feverish perhaps from his wound, spoke

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thus intemperately of Brant, whose doubtful Indian
origin did not commend him to the romantic student,
and whose clerkly employment as secretary of
Guy Johnson had not raised him in the eyes of the
aspiring young soldier; while recent events made
Max regard him as a crafty, cruel, semi-civilized
barbarian, who brought the name of “Mohawk”
into abhorrence and contempt. Greyslaer had his
eyes fixed upon the rafters above him while thus
warmly and disdainfully inveighing against the captor
of Alida, and he did not, therefore, observe the
agitated movement with which the Medicine-man
carried his hand to the knife which he wore in his
girdle, though, from the excitement under which
he spoke, it is doubtful if even such observation
would have restrained his heated expressions.

The magician took two or three turns through
the narrow apartment before he trusted himself to
reply, which he did at last with calmness and dignity.

“Young man, you speak falsely, though probably
unknowingly, in calling Joseph Brant a half-breed;
and, were you not intrusted by him to my
care, you should die on this ground for so vile a
slander. Thayendanagea is a Mohawk of the full
blood. And if any gainsay this truth, Brant, much
as he holds your European usages to scorn, will—I
take it upon myself to say—meet any rebel officer
of his own rank in private quarrel, after the foolish
fashion of the whites. For the rest—” and here
a strange and undefinable expression of emotion
passed over the swarthy features of the speaker,
who seemed to hesitate for words to express his
mingled feelings—“for the rest, the Sachem would,
I know, forgive you for the love you seem to bear
his race; and it may be true that he has done ill
in linking the fortunes of his tribe with those of

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either party of the whites. The carrion birds might
have quarrelled over the carcass, but the eagle
should never have stooped to share their wrangling,
if he would soar with untainted plumage.”

“Your tribesmen, noble Mohawk, if indeed you
be an Indian,” answered Greyslaer, touched by the
proud yet feeling tone with which the last words
were uttered, “your red brethren had indeed better
keep aloof from us, alike in war or in peace, for
they seem to acquire only the worst attributes of
civilized life by attempting to mingle with us as
one people: and their share in this struggle must—”

“Ay, you speak well, young man,” interrupted
the Indian, now wholly thrown off his dignified
reserve of manner by what appeared to be a theme
of great excitement with him; “if your vaunted
civilization be not all a fraud, your perverted learning
but a shallow substitute for the wisdom of the
heart, your so-called social virtues but a loose covering
for guile, like the frail thatch of leaves that
hides the traps of an Indian hunter; if your religion
be not a bitter satire upon the lives of all of
ye; if, in a word, all your conflicting teachings
and practices be indeed reconcilable to Truth and
pleasing to The Spirit, then hath he created Truth
of as many colours as he hath man; and his red
children should still rest content with the simple
system which alone their hearts are fitted to understand.”

Greyslaer was precisely at that age when most
men of an imaginative cast of mind mistake musing
for philosophizing, sentiment for religion; and with
that ready confidence in the result of one's own reflections
and mental experience which is the darling
prerogative of youth and immaturity of thought, he
did not hesitate to assume the attitude of a teacher
in reply to the last remark of the Indian. “Truth,

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noble Mohawk, hath ever been, will ever be the
same. But the truths of the other world, as well as
of this, are often wrapped in mystery. God has, in
two dispensations of light from above, revealed to
mortals so much of his holy truth as the human
mind was fitted to receive.

“The first revelation was like a dawn in the forest,
where the young day shoots its horizontal rays
beneath the dusky canopy of tree-tops, and, glancing
between the columned trunks, streams upon the path
of the benighted wanderer of the wilderness. That
matin-light—those holy rays of the virgin morn of
true religion—I am willing to believe, illumined the
lake-girdled mountains of the Iroquois hunter as
well as the cedar-crowned hills of the Hebrew
shepherd. It shone alike, perhaps, upon the pathway
of either, if indeed they were not one and the
same people. But the realm of glory to which that
pathway led; the snares that beset it; the solace
and refreshment that lay within reach of the traveller,
alternating his perils, these it required a second
revelation to bring to light; when the sun of righteousness,
fairly uprisen, should throw the blaze of
noontide into that forest, revealing now, in stern
reality, its yawning caverns, its precipices and pitfalls;
now touching with mellow beauty its mossy
resting-places, or sparkling with cheerful radiance
upon its refreshing wayside-waters; and now bathing
with glorious effulgence the region beyond
the wilderness, where lay the final rest and reward
of the wanderer. The good men of my race, therefore,
preach not a new Truth to the Indian! they
seek but to share with him that broader light which
has been vouchsafed to us regarding the same one
Eternal Truth.”

The Mohawk listened with an air of deep respect
to the earnest language of the youth, but his

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own feelings and prejudices were too deeply excited
to permit the discussion long to preserve the
abstract character which Greyslaer attempted to
give it.

“I spoke not against the truths of Christianity,”
said he; “for they may have their sanctuary
as well in the desert and the forest as in the city;
I spoke not, I say, of the pure light of Christianity,
which your mobbled faith no more resembles than do
the stained and distorted rays that struggle through
a dungeon's window resemble the beams of the
noontide sun. The holy teachings of your Master
come to us like those unwholesome airs which,
travelling cut pure and invigorating from the skies,
are polluted and made pestiferous by traversing
some noxious marsh before they reach the unfortunate
mortal who is doomed to breathe them. It is
your vaunted social system from which I recoil with
loathing. Your so-called civilization is, in its very
essence, a tyrant and enthraller of the soul; it merges
the individual in the mass, and moulds him to
the purposes, not of God, but of a community of
men. It follows the guidance of true religion so far
only as that ministers to its own ends, and then it
turns and fashions anew its belief from time to
time, to suit the `improved' mechanism of its artificial
system. In crowded Europe the evil is irremediable;
for man the machine occupies less room
than man the herdsman or hunter; but your mode
of existence is not less a curse to ye—the white
man's curse, which he would fain share with his red
brother! But have I not seen how it works among
you? Have I not been to your palaces and your
churches, and seen there a deformed piece of earth
assume airs that become none but the great Spirit
above? Have I not been to your prisons, and seen
the wretched debtor peering through the bars? You

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call the Indian nations cruel! Yet liberty to a rational
creature as much exceeds property in value
as does the light of the sun that of the smallest
twinkling star! But you put them on a level, to
the everlasting disgrace of human nature. I have
seen the white captive writhing at the Indian stake,
and rending the air with shrieks of agony; strange
that the unhappy man did not endeavour, by his fortitude,
to atone in some degree for the crimes committed
during the life thus justly shortened. I have
witnessed all the hideous torments that you ascribe
to such a death, and yet I had rather die by the most
severe tortures ever inflicted by the Indian than
languish in one of your prisons a single year!
Great Spirit of the Universe! and do you call yourselves
Christians? Does the religion of him you
call your Saviour inspire this spirit and lead to these
practices?”[3]

Greyslaer, who listened with curious attention to
this strange harangue, as coming from the lips of an
Indian, was completely bewildered by the fluency
and energy with which the magician delivered his
tirade, and he scrutinized his features and complexion,
as if expecting to discover the lineaments of
some disguised renegado white, who, with talents
fitted for a better sphere, had, induced by caprice
or compelled by crime, banished himself from society,
and assumed the character of one of the aborigines.
But the natural and easy manner in which
the object of his suspicions turned the next moment
and addressed the Indian woman in her own language,
not less than the veneration with which the

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squaw received his behests, dispelled the idea, while
little opportunity was given him for making a more
minute examination. The Medicine-man, smiling
blandly, as if he read what was passing in the mind
of his patient, approached to his side, and telling
him that he was now about to consign him to the
care of others, asked Greyslaer, as the only return
expected for any service he might have rendered
him, to curb his tongue hereafter in speaking of Joseph
Brant!

Before the patriot officer could reply, the magician
had turned upon his heel and gained the door;
but, as if struck with an after thought, he instantly
returned, and, ere Greyslaer was aware of his intention,
he had bared his arm to the shoulder, produced
a stained flint from his pouch, and branded an uncouth
device, that made the skin smart with pain as
the blood oozed through.

“He who loves the Red-man may die by rifle or
tomahawk, but he will never be disgraced by the
scalping-knife or tortured at the stake if he shows
this mark to the followers of Thayendanagea!”

And, before Greyslaer could find language to express
his astonishment, either at the act or the words
which accompanied it, he was alone with the old
woman, who busied herself in reverentially picking
up and putting away the mumming tools of his profession
which the pseudo magician had flung upon
the ground as he disappeared through the door.

eaf153v1.n3

[3] The crude sentiments of this “Medicine-man,” as thus spoken,
seem, by some coincidence or other, to have been afterward
partially repeated by Thayendanagea, and in nearly similar words,
in a letter to a correspondent of the chieftain.—Vide Stone's Life
of Brant, vol. ii., p. 481.

CHAPTER XIII. THE SQUAW CAMP.

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The above lines describe, not inaptly, the scene
to which the wounded prisoner had been carried for
safety and seclusion. The lodge in which Greyslaer
lay helpless upon the bed of pain, stood, among
several others in the wilderness, remote from the
station where the warriors of the Mohawks were
collected; and, from the pleasant murmur of female
voices, and cheering call of children at play, which
met his ear when returning strength enabled the
wounded officer to be more observant of things
around him, he soon became aware that his present
domicil must be none other than the “Squaw Camp”
of Thayendanagea; a lonely fastness where, in time
of war, the women and children of his tribe were
sequestered for safety.

Eager to catch at anything to vary the monotony
of slow convalescence, and prompted by that thirst
for sunshine and the breeze which gives such a
yearning to the sick man's spirit, Greyslaer would
fain have expressed his desire to be lifted out in
front of the lodge. But, ignorant of the Mohawk
language, he found some difficulty in making the

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old squaw, who, as his only nurse, affected to regulate
all his movements, understand his wishes. Her
consent to the step, however, was obtained without
any great difficulty, and she transported the invalid
beyond the porch by dragging his pallet of skins,
with the patient upon it, to the outside of the wigwam.

A rivulet, bounded upon the opposite side by a
wall of vines and briers, which in their turn were
overhung by tall aspens, intermingled with the
swamp-ash and dusky tamarack, rippled against the
mossy bank whereon he lay, and hid its wanderings
in mazy thickets beyond. The hammock whereon
the cluster of wigwams which formed the camp had
been raised, seemed to afford the only spot firm
enough for such a purpose amid the spongy and
quaking morass that spread around on every side.
And this grassy esplanade was so limited in extent,
that a clump of witch-elms growing in the centre
cast their drooping branches nearly to the middle of
the stream that bathed the wild flowers on its edges.

Beneath one of these trees was collected a group
that instantly arrested the earnest gaze of the captive
officer. A merry crew of children, which seemed
to have been confided to her care, were playing
with a large, solemn hound that reposed at the feet
of a slim Indian girl. The girl, leaning against the
tree, with one pretty foot upraised upon its straggling
roots, sat weaving a baldric of silk and wampum,
whose gaudy strings lay partly on the green
sod beside her, and were partly held in long beaded
cords by a noble-looking woman that stood behind
her, playfully twining the gay tassels in the raven
locks of her companion. The face of the larger and
more commanding maiden was averted from his
gaze when her person first caught the eye of Greyslaer;
but her snowy hand, resting for a moment

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upon the nut-brown neck of the Indian girl, sufficiently
revealed to him the neighbourhood of one of
his own race and colour; perhaps a countrywoman;
perhaps, indeed—he could scarcely repress a cry of
joy at the thought of the bare possibility—perhaps
Alida! The proud and commanding mien—proud,
even though something mournful in her air was
blended with the half sportive act in which she was
engaged—was surely that of Alida. The same dejection
or listlessness of manner, call it which you
will, it was true, might characterize any female captive
so situated; but the scenes which Miss De Roos
had recently passed through would best mark her
as the victim of present melancholy.

So Greyslaer thought, and his surmises were almost
ripened to a certainty when he looked again
at the hound. He thought he beheld in him the
cause of an outcry which had been more than once
raised near his cabin, as the shrewish squaw beat
off a dog that from day to day persisted in thrusting
his nose under the blanket which formed the door,
and smelling round as if in search of an acquaintance.
The invalid had himself noticed the intrusion
as pertinacious, but believed the offender to be
merely one of the wolfish mongrels that hang round
an Indian camp. It was like recognising an old
friend to discover his mistake. “Brom!” he called,
in a low voice; the hound raised his ears. “Brom!”
he repeated, in the same suppressed tone. The dog
shook off the urchins that beleaguered him as he
sprang to his feet and looked anxiously around.
“Brom, my poor fellow!” said Greyslaer, somewhat
louder, and the hound bounded upon him, devouring
him with caresses.

“Down, sir, down,” he cried, extricating himself
with difficulty from this overpowering outbreak of
affection, and turning to look for the fair mistress of

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the animal. But Alida, if it were indeed she, had
disappeared on the instant; and the Indian girl, collecting
her work together, was preparing to follow
her companion.

The wounded Greyslaer, whose situation prevented
his moving, was filled with grief and vexation
when, unheeding every gesture by which he
attempted to arrest her attention, the Indian girl also
flitted from the spot. He sank back, exhausted with
agitation, upon his couch of skins; and believing
almost that his fevered senses had deceived him,
turned the next moment to look for the dog, to see
if he too had been spirited away. The hound had
couched down a few yards off, where he sat watching
his new-found acquaintance. He wagged his
tail, and approaching as he caught an encouraging
look from Greyslaer, proved, by rubbing his cold
nose against the hand of his friend, that he at least
was a substantial thing of earth.

“Why, old Brom, are you still true to your mistress's
friend, while she flies his presence as if he
were an evil spirit?”

The dog looked as if he had every disposition in
the world to comprehend what was said to him, but,
like most dogs who fail in such endeavour, gave no
reply.

“But here comes my termagant nurse, and you
must walk off, my poor fellow.”

As the youth spoke he warded off a blow which
the truculent dame aimed at the hound with a stick
which she seized from the ground, and which Greyslaer,
snatching from her hand, shook at her in a
threatening manner, to show his displeasure, before
casting it into the stream near him. The worthy
Brom, meanwhile, either understanding the last
words which had been addressed to him, or unwilling
to create scandal by causing a domestic broil in

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Greyslaer's establishment, wisely abstracted himself
as fast as his legs could carry him. It is a curious
fact, that a well-bred dog, who has been happy in
his associations with the polite of our species, will
never fly at a woman or child; and Brom, though he
preferred running to fighting in the present instance,
curled his tail so erect upon his retreat, that no
suspicion could attach to his valour. Turning round
when he had gained a discreet distance from the
virago, he paused for a few moments, and looked
back upon her with a countenance more in sorrow
than in anger before taking up the lazy trot with
which he finally disappeared behind a remote wigwam
of the group.

The young officer was not at a loss to account
for the conduct of the white lady in apparently
avoiding him, if she were here a captive like himself.
But, assuming her to be such, he could conceive
no satisfactory reason for her discouraging
every kind of communication between them. Yet
such seemed really to be the case when, a few days
after his first transient glimpse of her person, his eye
again encountered her figure, as, with the luxurious
laziness of an invalid, he loitered in the cool shade,
musing upon his situation. His strength, which had
rapidly improved within the last few days, enabled
him now to move toward the lady; but the eager
cry with which he pronounced the name of “Alida”
warned her of his approach; and its earnest and
anxious repetition only added quickness to the speed
with which she eluded his pursuit.

The dispirited Greyslaer began now to doubt
whether or not the fair captive, for such both the
dress and complexion proclaimed her to be, were
really Miss De Roos. And yet, while it would be
equally strange for any other of his countrywomen
to practise a similar avoidance, considering the

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situation of both parties, and how much a good understanding
between them might tend to facilitate their
mutual escape, the circumstances under which Alida
had been carried off, and the presence of her favourite
dog in company with the mysterious maiden,
seemed sufficiently to prove that the white lady
could be no other than Miss De Roos.

Another suspicion which passed through the
mind of Greyslaer was hastily dismissed as unworthy
both of Alida and himself, considering the
perils which he had encountered to restore her to
her friends. It was, that the coldness with which
she had ever frowned upon his boyish suit actuated
her conduct in their present situation. “She is unwilling,”
said he, bitterly, “to receive succour at
my hands. Nay, she is indifferent to the disaster
which had overtaken me in attempting to rescue
her; and regardless, perhaps, as to what may be
my fate as a wounded prisoner in the hands of these
savages; and yet she lacks not humanity! Surely,
am I less than naught to her?”

We have said that Greyslaer repelled these unworthy
suspicions, and so he did, indignant that a
thought demeaning to his mistress should have
found a place in his mind, much less shaped itself
into words. He repelled it, but in vain, for the
same ungenerous thought recurred again and again,
with withering effect upon his already depressed
spirits.

Alas! what a slight does that thought bring over
a young, ardent, ingenuous mind! The thought
that it hath lavished its wealth of loving upon one
who not only can make no return, but who cares
not, recks not how prodigally the treasures of the
heart may be wasted; who regards the most generous
sacrifices of disinterested feeling as mere incense
upon the altar of vanity; who derides the

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idolatry of true affection, and holds the deepest
throes of devoted passion but as idle sallies of
youthful extravagance that have no claim upon her
sympathy, that can never awaken her gratitude!
Such, however, is too often the recompense of the
misplaced affection that knows not how to conceal
or regulate its own overflowings.

Ingratitude, however, is not, therefore, the special
fault of the sex! It is human nature, not woman
nature, which sets lightly by a homage which has
never been solicited, and which is paid without
stint! When that homage is pertinacious and unseasonable,
it becomes irksome and offensive. The
attentions of love that we do not reciprocate, however
pleasing to our vanity at first, cease to flatter
when passion increases to infatuation. The idolatry
which springs from too extravagant an appreciation
of our character or personal qualities, seems
akin either to folly or madness, and we no longer
value the good opinion which is the offspring rather
of a heated fancy than of a judgment which we
can respect.

But though these chilling laws of reasoning human
nature admit of but little mitigation, yet Alida
de Roos was of too magnanimous a spirit to apply
them in full to one who loved her, if not wisely,
yet with all truth and nobleness; and seeing in her
youthful admirer all the qualities to awaken a sister's
tenderness, she mourned his infatuation with a
sister's sorrow. Love him she thought she never
could, even if her heart had not been preoccupied
by an emotion that closed it completely against
such a sentiment. Her haughty and aspiring mind
had hitherto detected no qualities in Greyslaer's
character which could touch it to gentle issues. It
was only as the refined but visionary student, the
romantic cherisher of vain and speculative dreams,

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such as float around a young enthusiast who knows
the world through books alone, that Greyslaer had
hitherto appeared to the lady of his love. The play
of his polished fancy, the allurements of his cultivated
intellect, had interested her in studying the
character of a stripling who, some years her junior,
and continually thrown in her society as the most
intimate friend of her brother, did, not unnaturally,
attract her kindly regard. But while, with less
mental acquirement upon her own part, Alida perhaps
over-estimated that of which Greyslaer could
boast, yet her esteem for his talents and accomplishments
was full as nearly allied to pity as to admiration.
She admired the qualities in themselves, but
she thought that their possessor, in this instance,
was deficient in the power to make them useful
either to himself or to others. She thought the
character of Greyslaer was wholly unsuited to the
country and the circumstances amid which his lot
was cast. He possessed the requisites, among
other scenes and other times, to grace a fortune or
uphold an honourable name; but he lacked the
stirring qualities to win either by his own exertions.
He was, in a word, one whose impracticable, feeble,
or misapplied energies doomed him to mediocrity
in life; a mediocrity which, by the comfortable
respectability that she believed would attend it,
gained nothing in the eyes of a woman whom poverty
or peril would never have prevented from sharing
the destiny of the man she loved.

'Twas strange! yet the acute-minded Alida de
Roos seemed never to dream that the wild devotion
which the student bore her was what absorbed all
the salient energies of his soul; that she was the
bond that kept its pinions from mounting; that idolatry
for her alone had robbed ambition's shrine of
Greyslaer's worship; that love—love only—

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all-absorbing, all-devouring love, had delved the grave in
which his youth's best promise was swallowed up!

The bitter reflections of the lonely prisoner were
destined to a more early and agreeable relief than
he had anticipated. An hour or more had passed
away, and Greyslaer still sat beneath the weeping
elm, now moodily gazing upon the stream that
twinkled through the bushes near him, and now
casting a fierce and impatient glance upon some
lounging Indian, an aged or broken-down warrior
of the band, who had been left by the chief for the
nominal protection of the camp. At last an object
of more agreeable interest presented itself in the
shape of Brom, the stag-hound. Greyslaer had
not seen the dog for some days; and surmising
that the friendly animal had been kept out of his
sight by design, he was at once struck with the
peculiarity of his conduct now, as the hound, instead
of bounding eagerly forward to fawn upon
him, exhibited the coolest indifference to the call of
his friend. The sagacious Brom went wandering
hither and thither, smelling idly along the ground,
and, though gradually coming nearer, making his approaches
after such a careless fashion, that Greyslaer
was in doubt whether the brute knew him or
not. He whistled, and again called him by name;
but the dog, raising his head, looked vacantly
around him, and then resumed his course, without
adding either to the rapidity or directness of his
steps. At last, getting within a few yards of his
friend, the worthy Brom appeared to be for the first
time aware of his neighbourhood, though not until
he had first passed by, and, as it seemed, thrown a
chance look over his shoulder, which induced him
to turn and come gravely forward, as not wishing to
cut an old acquaintance by design. Amused with
“the airs” of the dog—for in happier days Greyslaer

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had frequently seen him put on the same whimsical
dignity for less cause than might have given
Brom offence at his last visit to the wigwam—the
young man took the head of the hound in his lap
and patted it kindly. Brom only acknowledged
the caress by rubbing his head against the knees of
his friend, as if his collar were too tight for him;
and, placing his hand under the clasp to loosen it,
Greyslaer felt beneath it a scroll of birchen bark,
whose smooth and flexible texture allows it to be
written upon and folded like paper. Agitated with
joy at the discovery, the surprise of the youth did
not, however, prevent him from instantly concealing
the missive in his dress; while the wise Brom, apparently
contented with the interview, went smelling
and loitering on his way around the camp, as
if his tour was one of idleness altogether.

The note, as read by Greyslaer the moment he
had attained the interior of his lodge, from which
his quondam nurse and present amiable house-keeper
was happily absent, contained only these
words, written with charcoal:

“An hour after midnight, be near the fallen sycamore
which crosses the brook within a few paces
of your wigwam. The Indian girl will conduct you
to an interview with

CHAPTER XIV. THE HAUNTED ROCK.

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“And what fears The Spreading Dew in this
place, that she would have me now choose another
for her to lead the white man to, that I may hear
tidings of my friends?”

“This rock whereon we sit, lady—for Teondetha
told me thou wert a chieftainess among thy people—
this rock is sacred to the spirit that watches over
true affection. Here the young hunter breathes the
vow that binds his fidelity for ever. And she that
hearkens to it here, if listening but from girlish levity,
or induced by maiden prankishness to break it
afterward, she withers from the earth like a plant
plucked from the garden of the blessed, and sent to
shrivel mid the fires of the Evil One.”

“But, foolish girl, I mean not to mislead this
youth,” rejoined Alida, in the Mohawk tongue,
which, like many a lady near the border at that
time, she spoke with ease and fluency. “Is the
soul of my young friend so full of Teondetha, that
she thinks every man, like him, a lover?”

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“The image of her true warrior, though ever
present to The Spreading Dew, still leaves room
for all good spirits, and their ruler, Owaneyo, to be
remembered. The brown-haired captive loves my
blue-eyed sister; and if he be no more to her than
she says, it were mockery to the spirit to bring him
here.”

“And by what means got you the idea that this
young man thinks of your friend save as a countrywoman
in captivity like himself?”

“Thou speakest with two tongues, lady; and I,
though the talk of the white man is strange to me,
can do the same. The brown-haired warrior is a
friend of the Oneidas, and can use the tongue of
Teondetha; and, even if words had not betrayed
his secret, as he implored me to look first to your
safety, lady, when you came not to the spot to
which I led him upon the opposite side of the
camp yesternight, should I not have known how it
stood with him? Doth not the breeze know why
the flower trembles when it fans it? And held I not
the captive's hand while I spoke of you, when guiding
him through the thicket's depths?”

“It is too late now, my gentle sister, to change
our place of meeting,” said Miss De Roos, who saw
that it was equally impossible to reason the girl out
of the conviction which she had lately adopted, or
the superstition which was so intimately ingrafted
with her forest faith. “I must see the youth
to-night, and upon this spot, or we must abandon
the interview altogether; and even now I hear the
sound as of some one leaping from bog to bog in
the quaking fen around us.”

The Mohawk girl hesitated no longer. Anxiety
for the fate of Teondetha's friend, wandering in
darkness amid the spongy and treacherous morass,
laced everywhere among its blind thickets with

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deep and sloughy pools, urged her to spring forward
and guide him in safety to the Haunted Rock; and
in a few moments Greyslaer had penetrated the
copse of tamaracks that girdled it, and gained the
firm and broad platform whereon his mistress stood.
The Indian maiden, from considerations of delicacy
that in such matters seem common to her sex, however
uncultivated, instantly glided away; and the
lovers, if such they may be called, were left alone
together.

And now, young gallant, so lithe of foot and bold
of hand, so ready in speech and act, alike amid manhood's
councils and warrior fray, where lurks thy
smooth tongue, thy nimble wit and stout endeavour,
that have already proclaimed thee man among the
ablest of thy fellows? Why do thy knees tremble,
and thy quivering lips refuse to lackey thy laggard
thoughts to utterance? Why tak'st thou not the
outstretched hand the maid in friendliness accords
thee? Why fall thy muttered syllables like broken
drops feebly distilled from some slow-thawing fountain?
Is it the Divinity of the place that awes thee?
or doth thy spirit quail before an earthly presence?

“Greyslaer,” said Alida, solemnly, for her woman's
heart was touched by the agitation which
overwhelmed her lover, and the bright stars shining
down upon the spot revealed the paleness of his
cheek. “God! he knows that I would spare you
the pain my words may inflict to-night; I sought
this interview for a far different object from that to
which I now see that it must—that it ought, perhaps,
for your future happiness, to tend. I blame
myself in not inviting such an explanation between
us long ago. Be a man, Max Greyslaer, and shrink
not at what I am about to say. You love me?”

“To idolatry, to madness,” cried the young man,
in a hoarse whisper of passion, while his thronged

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feelings, rushing tumultuously to find vent through
his lips, seemed nearly to suffocate him as he flung
himself upon his knees before Alida.

The lady recoiled against a blasted tree that grew
near by, and, overcome for a moment, could only
mutely motion to him to rise. He sprang to his feet,
and stood with folded arms before her. “Alas!
alas!” she said, at length recovering herself, “you
need not have told me that. And yet, the God of
Heaven be my judge, I dreamed not till this night
that your regard was of so deep a nature. But you
are yet young, Greyslaer; love cannot exist without
hope, and this fancy will soon pass away, or be
transferred to another more worthy of your esteem;
to one who can reciprocate your affection.”

“Yes! when the last year's stubble shall sprout
with a second spring; when that scathed tree
against which you lean shall shake off the moss
that drinks up its sap of life, and be clothed anew
with verdure of its own; when—”

“Hold, Max, hold; this is the very phrensy of
passion. I cannot listen to you longer, unless you
show some regard for my feelings by repressing the
vehemence of yours. Oh! Max Greyslaer, if you
knew how deep a cause I have for grief in which
you cannot share, you would from this moment
cease to add to my sorrows by urging this misplaced,
this most unhappy passion.”

“You unhappy, Alida?—forgive me for thus calling
you. You the victim of a secret sorrow? You,
with that smooth cheek; that rounded, pliant form;
that brow on which—no, no, the hand of grief hath
never left its wasting fingers there, nor hollow care
enshrined himself in such a tenement; you but
mock me, Alida; or, rather, you would thus, in
mercy, crush my ill-starred passion. But, Miss De

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Roos, you know me not! If the presumption of
my love offend you—”

“Oh! not offend me,” tearfully murmured the afflicted
girl.

“If the madness of my love offend you,” pursued
Max, unheeding the low-voiced interruption, “you
may teach me to curb, to smother, to bury in my
inmost soul the feeling that consumes it; but there,
there it will burn for ever. The heart of Greyslaer
can know no second love.”

“This is too, too much! It will drive me mad to
speak it; yet nothing else will extinguish his unhappy
infatuation. Max Greyslaer, hear me. I
have long since given you the regard of a sister.
I have watched you alike in your studies and your
sports, with the pride and the interest of an elder
sister; and a sister's fondness would have followed,
could I have shut out the painful conviction that it
was not with the affection of a brother you regarded
me. This interest in your welfare alone would impel
me to leave no step untried to root out this fatal
passion from your heart. But since the wild avowal
of this night; since the declaration of desperate
feelings you but now betrayed, I feel, though most
innocently the cause of them, that you have still
deeper claims upon my sympathy, that you have
new ones upon my gratitude. I feel that there is
but one way to break the miserable chain by which
you would link your fate with mine, and give you
back to the higher and happier destiny for which,
by every circumstance save this one only, you are
fitted. Nay, thank me not; I acknowledge you
have a right to my confidence.” She paused, and
the features upon which the domestic sorrows of the
last few weeks had left no feeble impress, became
agitated with an expression of pain, which even the
recollection of that night of horror at the

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Hawksnest had failed to trace. Greyslaer himself awaited
what was to follow; and her words, as she resumed,
were spoken in a tone low but clear, firm but inexpressibly
mournful. “There is,” she said, “there
is but one man living, Greyslaer—one as vile, sordid,
ruthless, and malignant as you are gentle, generous,
and noble—one only other who shares the
secret you have this night wrung from me.”

“And he is—”

“My husband!”

The wretched girl, whose lofty spirit was still
farther wrought up by the high and magnanimous
sentiment of generosity which sustained her for the
moment, swooned the instant she had pronounced
the words. The weakness, however, quickly passed
away, as, at a cry of alarm from Greyslaer, the
Indian maiden bounded from the covert, and applied
some cool glossy leaves, wet with the dews of night,
to the brow of the sufferer.

The blow was better received by Greyslaer than
could have been expected or hoped for by her that
dealt it. He was indeed astounded and petrified
by the first announcement; but all consideration
for himself seemed the next moment merged in
concern for his unhappy mistress.

“Lady,” he said, dropping on one knee before her,
and with an air of deep respect pressing his lips to
the hand which she did not attempt to withdraw,
“you spoke truly, lady, when you said my fate
was linked with yours; but you erred in believing
that aught could sever the chain, though it might
lead me to destruction. As a lover, after what I
have heard this night, you shall never know me
more. But you have still left me something to
live for, in taking away the only hope that could
make existence happy. You have given me back
to myself, but from this moment I am more

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completely yours than ever. The romantic dream of
my youth has passed away, the madness of my
misplaced and boyish love is over; and here, by
the cool light of manhood's enfranchised reason,
here upon this planted rock, with yon bright heaven
as witness of my vow, I swear, while the pulses
of life beat within me, never to leave nor desert
you until I unravel this hideous mystery, and break
the spell in which some fiend has manacled your
soul. Nay, shrink not, dearest lady, as if my sworn
service might prove intrusive. How or why these
devilish meshes have been woven around you, I
ask you not to explain until I have in some way
approved my faith and loyalty. But be it when or
where you choose to make the revelation; be the
deed what it may, you claim in return for the precious
boon of your confidence, if human hand can
work it, it shall be done at your bidding.”

A light as from a maniac's eye glared in that
of Alida as the young man rose slowly up before
her after this wild and solemn adjuration.

“No, no, Greyslaer,” she cried, shaking back the
long tresses which had fallen in disorder over her
neck and shoulders. “No, Greyslaer, thou art not
yet dear enough to me to share the fruition of the
hoarded hope I have lived upon for years. Alida's
own hand shall alone avenge Alida! For what
else have I cherished the strength of this useless
frame; for what have I forgot my woman's nature,
and shared your schooling in feats of arms with
my brother? Think you it was an idle caprice
of my sex, or the perverted taste of an Amazon,
that made me choose pistol and rapier, instead
of needle and distaff, for my amusement? No,
Max Greyslaer; my hand, as well as my heart, hath
been schooled for years to the accomplishment of
one only end, and they will neither of them fail

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me at my purpose. That is, if this poor brain hold
out.”

And, pressing both hands to her temples, the unfortunate
young lady looked so bewildered for a
moment, that Greyslaer could hardly resist the conviction
that her intellects were disordered. Yet, if
such were indeed the case, how, he thought, could
her mind be so well balanced in regard to all other
subjects? In reference to this one, too, her reason,
though disturbed, was not clouded; the agitation
of the fountain did indeed hide its depths from
view, but the water was bright and limpid still.

If it be true, however, “that great wit to madness
nearly is allied,” while gleams of insanity have
been discovered in minds which have exercised a
wide and enduring influence over mankind, and,
mastering their disease till the last, have left in
death the wisest of their survivers doubtful as to
the suspicion that has attached to them; then might
a far more experienced observer of human nature
than young Greyslaer be at fault. Nor, indeed,
were it just to conclude, only from what he had
witnessed, that the senses of Alida were deranged.
The sentiments which she had just uttered were
indeed abhorrent to the nature of her sex, to her
Christian education, and all her early associations
of refinement. But while the excitement under
which she spoke would sufficiently account for her
momentary air of wildness, there was none of the
incoherence of distraction in her speech; and as
for nature and education, the first had been shocked,
overthrown, and changed by the outrage which
trampled upon it, and the last—the last is but an
artificial barrier, that at once gives way when the
former has become perverted.

While these reflections, or others not unlike them,
passed hurriedly through the mind of Greyslaer,

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the lovely subject of them seemed too busied with
her own conflicting thoughts to observe the earnest
and anxious gaze that was riveted upon her countenance.
At last, as if shaking off the load that
weighed upon her spirits, and recovering from the
attitude of dejection that for a moment bowed her
commanding form, she said, in a calm voice,

“I would, Mr. Greyslaer, that you could forget
what has passed between us this night. I have
been hasty in permitting you to commit yourself to
take an interest in my affairs which they do not
deserve at your hands. I have thought of the mischievous
consequences of yielding you a more full
and complete confidence; and it would be ungenerous
in me to claim your active sympathy for the
blind and partial revelation of my sorrows already
made. I beseech you to remember only the friendly
interest with which I requite your regard, and to
forget all else that has passed between us.”

These formal words, which struck chillingly
upon the ear of Greyslaer, were pronounced in
that measured tone of superior self-possession with
which a master-spirit may sometimes address an
inferior, blended with the air of kind authority
which considerate age will put on when conversing
with inexperienced youth. But, though she knew
it not yet, the ascendancy which the generous and
haughty-souled Alida had hitherto exercised over
the mind of her lover was gone for ever; and Greyslaer
made her feel that it was so in his reply.

“An hour ago, Miss De Roos, and I was, perhaps,
the rash and doting boy you think me. Rash
in aspiring to the hand of one so gifted as yourself,
doting in that I dared to tell you of my passion;
but though I still bear you a regard passing the
love of kindred, however near, boy I am no longer.
The day-star of my youth has set for ever; the

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destiny of my life is written; for good or for evil, 'tis
henceforth twined with yours. If you repent the
share you may have had in thus determining my
fate, if it be a generous concern for my welfare
that prompted your words, your anxiety is thrown
away. It is too late for you to recede; and I—I
have thrown my cast, and am determined to stand
the hazard of the die!”

“And how,” said the lady, with an irresolute, uneasy
air, that perhaps betrayed a mingled feeling of
jealous pride, of growing self-diffidence, and newly-awakened
respect for the lofty and decided tone
the youth assumed so unexpectedly, “how, Greyslaer,
am I to avail myself of any service which you
might render me?”

“By designating the villain at whose life you
aim, and leaving me to avenge your injuries.”

“Speak you in earnest, Max Greyslaer? Do you
think me, then, capable of such ignoble and coldblooded
selfishness? so ignoble as to place my mortal
quarrel in the hands of one who is a stranger to
my blood; so selfish as to requite affection by imposing
a task that may lead to death?”

“Well spoken, young missus, like a gal of spunk
as you are,” exclaimed a harsh voice near by, while
a brawny ruffian, leaping from the thicket, and striking
the rock with a short Indian war-club as he
gained his footing upon it, placed himself between
Greyslaer and Alida. “What, ho! younker,” he
cried; “you would add to the account that is chalked
up agin you already, would you? God help you
in his own way; but, unless the devil fail wild Wat
afore then, you will find him a hard reckoner; that
is, if your carcass first escape a roasting at the hands
of the bloody Mohawk.”

“Stand off, ruffian,” muttered Greyslaer, choking
with passion, as he saw the savage-looking fellow

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circling the waist of Alida with one arm, while,
weaponless and feeble from his recent wound, he
felt himself incapable of protecting her.

“Fair words, fair words, if you please, my young
master; I come here only to rescue this lady from
Indian captivity; and, as the Redskins are still my
friends in the main, I should be sorry to rob the
stake doubly by knocking you in the head.”

“Oh, Max,” murmured Alida, who had hitherto
stood as if paralyzed with horror, “strive not with
this dark and terrible man, who even now has stepped,
as from the grave, between us.”

“And so you, too, eh, my fraulein, thought, like
many others, that Red Wolfert had kicked the bucket,
because I took Wat's advice, and cleared out
for a while, to save my neck, till things should blow
over. But times have changed, my spanking lass;
tall fellows hold up their heads once more, and I
come here to exercise the rights of one of them over
Mistress—”

“Speak, speak but one word, I pray you, Alida!
Is this horrible ruffi—is this your husband?”

“Dunder und blixem, and suppose I be,” cried
the man, catching the words out of the mouth of
Alida, whose senses seemed too much benumbed
to make a ready reply. “Don't you see how the
gal wilts like when I look at her, and who but her
natural husband should make a woman cower?”

“In the name of the devil, who are you, that speak
so fitly in his tongue?” said Greyslaer, making a
wary movement toward the man, in the desperate
hope of clutching from his hand the short mace with
which he dallied.

“A clerk of St. Nicholas, who will despatch you
with a message to his employer if you move a step
nearer, verfluchter kerl.”

“If you be the fiend himself, here's at you,”

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shouted Greyslaer, bounding furiously forward. The
contest was too unequal to leave a hope of success
for the invalid youth, had he succeeded in closing
with his antagonist; but the latter, to whom the now
senseless Alida seemed no encumbrance, as he actively
leaped aside, laughed to scorn the vain efforts
of his assailant, who still pressed impetuously upon
him. His words, however, betrayed his growing
irritation, as, backing step by step toward the edge
of the rock, so as still to keep the full swing of his
arm while the youth attempted to close in upon
him,

“Gemeiner hund, madcap, idiot, dolt, take that
to quiet you,” he cried, at last dealing a blow that
brought Greyslaer instantly to the ground.

Valtmeyer, for the ruffian was no other than that
redoubtable outlaw, waited not to see how durable
might be the effects of the blow, but, plunging into
the bushes, he glided along a slippery log with his
burden, thridding the morass like one accustomed
to its dangers. Stricken down, and stunned for the
moment, Greyslaer was slowly regaining his feet,
when the first object he beheld was the Mohawk
maiden, gazing, with clasped hands and bewildered
eyes, toward the thickets into which the outlaw
had disappeared. His towering form, his sallow
features, his long beard of grizzled red, and aspect
altogether foreign and hideous to her sight, made
him no unfit personification of those evil spirits of
the forest which the Indian girl would naturally
paint, as the very reverse in appearance from the
smooth-cheeked warriors of her race; and the simple
sylvan maiden, as she breathed a prayer for the
ill-fated pale sister of her sex, thought that the offended
genius of the place had permitted some fiend
to intrude within his hallowed circle, and punish on
the spot the first violation of the Haunted Rock.

BOOK SECOND.

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