[figure description] Page 190.[end figure description]

Bradshawe, after the interview which had been
so abruptly commenced and broken off with Brant,
lost no time in making his escape from the precincts
of Johnstown, where the presence of the patriot
forces made every moment fraught with peril to
him. Indeed, after escaping so nearly from their
hands, he was obliged more than once to make a
wide circuit in order to avoid the straggling bands
of Whig militia that seemed pouring along the
roads, bent upon making their way to join the main
column of Schuyler's army.

Schoharie was the point which he now aimed at
making as quickly as possible; and as it was long
before he could venture to cross the frozen river and
turn his horse's head upon the direct route he wished
to travel, the noble animal had occasion more
than once to rue the brutal temper of his master, as,
chafing with impatience at each cause of delay that
interposed, he now spurred hotly toward the bank
of the stream, and now wheeled from its brink, or
reined up sharply at some turning of the road.
Here the rapids, or the evident weakness of the ice,

[figure description] Page 191.[end figure description]

prevented him from crossing; there the deep snowdrifts,
or the steep and slippery banks, prevented
him from descending to the frozen highway; and
now again there were appearances upon the opposite
shore which deterred him from trusting himself
upon the snowy waste, where his dark figure crossing
over might be seen at a long gunshot, and tempt
some idle patriot ranger, or officious “committee-of-safety”
member to bring him to for a parley.

The immediate personal peril weighed not, indeed,
a feather with him. But to be recognised
and tracked in the snow to his ultimate destination
might be fatal to the projects which he had now
most at heart. The truth is, that, though Bradshawe
had, when he found himself so hard pressed by
Brant, designated the Cave of Waneonda as the
present retreat of Alida, he was not himself perfectly
assured that she was really there, though his
last orders to his creature Valtmeyer had been to
make that disposition of his prize; and, believing
that his wishes in this respect had been complied
with, he was actually upon his way to the cavern,
when the rumoured approach of Schuyler induced
him momentarily to change his destination, and
make the best of his way to Sir John Johnson.

Brant, as it appeared, had been misinformed as to
Bradshawe's keeping himself aloof from his political
friends, and attending to his own concerns in Schoharie.
His actual business had been among the
Tories in the neighbourhood of Wyoming, whom
he succeeded in confirming, and drawing off in a
body, to unite their forces with a band of Iroquois
which had established a position about the forks of
the Susquehanna, upon the confines of New-York
and Pennsylvania. And this absence in that then
unsettled country will account for his ignorance of
the projected movement and subsequent march of

[figure description] Page 192.[end figure description]

the patriots upon Johnstown, until he had reached
the southwestern settlements of Tryon county.

He had unexpectedly, upon an order from Sir
John, started upon his expedition immediately after
planning the abduction of Brant's fair captive,
which was so ruthlessly consummated by his creature
Valtmeyer. He had heard of Valtmeyer's success
only through an Indian runner charged with
letters from Sir John, by whom Valtmeyer also contrived
to transmit intelligence from himself. The
tidings from either spoke of the precarious condition
of their party, and Bradshawe determined that,
whatever course public affairs might take, his own
private views should not necessarily be thwarted.

At present he thought only how he could best
make sure of the prey which Valtmeyer had thus
far secured for him.

That ruffian, immediately upon the seizure of his
victim, had, by the aid of confederates, transported
her to a lonely cabin upon the skirts of the settlements,
where a thrifty innkeeper, privately associated
with the outlaw in certain matters of business
best known to themselves, maintained a small establishment,
which he dignified with the name of his
Dairy Farm.

The inn of mine host lay some miles distant from
this possession upon the public highway. During
the first months of the present troubles it had been
used alike by both parties as a rendezvous for their
public meetings. But as the cause of the Whigs
advanced in popularity, the opposite faction appeared
to have withdrawn their patronage from the house,
though there were some shrewd surmises that the
landlord did not therefore suffer in his coffers. But
when it was whispered that the Dairy Farm harboured
a nest of Tory spies, and served merely as
a sort of scouting-post to collect political gossip

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from the inn below, the close inquiry that was at
once instituted, followed by an examination of the
tavern-keeper before a committee of safety, elicited
nothing to inculpate that worthy, and, as every one
thought, much-injured individual.

An old black woman and a strapping mulatto lass,
whose labours in the dairy were superintended, from
time to time, by the pretty daughter of the proprietor,
seemed the only permanent or occasional occupants
of the place. The old woman was deaf and
suffering from rheumatism; the mulatto seemed an
exception to the generality of her quick-witted race,
in being as stolid and stupid of intellect as she was
simple and ignorant; and the pretty Tavy Wingear
was known the country round as a sprightly, frank,
and guileless girl, whom no one would think of making
the depositary of a political secret. All suspicions
about the Dairy Farm were allayed, and it
became nearly as safe a house for the royalist partisans
as ever, until the affair of the Hawksnest,
subsequent to which the Tories had been shy of
holding their secret meetings anywhere in this immediate
neighbourhood.

Such was the spot to which Valtmeyer bore his
prisoner; and here, having the two Africans to attend
upon her, Alida had passed even months, with
no signs of approaching rescue to cheer her solitude.
Valtmeyer was often, though never for any length
of time, absent from the house; and irksome as this
imprisonment became, yet, though he proffered her
the full range of the premises whenever his eye was
there to watch her motions, this was just the season
when confinement to her chamber became most welcome.

Long weeks wore on, and the hope of release became
almost extinct in her bosom. The summer
was gone; autumn, with its varied tints, made the

[figure description] Page 194.[end figure description]

forests around like one gorgeous bed of tulips to the
eye. Winter was at hand, with all its icy rigours;
yet the lapse of the seasons and the change of the
foliage, as she viewed it from her window, was all
that varied the monotonous hours of the unhappy
Alida. Once, indeed, and only a few days after she
was first immured in this lonely spot, her heart leaped
as she heard the blithe tones of a gay young female
voice beneath her window. But, flying to the
casement, she was scarcely permitted to catch a
glimpse of the young woman from whose lips came
the cheering sound, before Valtmeyer had rushed
into her apartment and rudely drawn her back from
the window.

Upon two other occasions she heard the same
tones at a distance; and once, before the autumn
became sere, she had seen a stranger female afar off,
gathering flowers upon the hillside, while a Canadian
pony stood grazing near her. The next moment
the country damsel leaped into her saddle, and,
galloping gayly past the house, guided her active
pony amid the stumps of the clearing until she had
reached the road, and soon after disappeared to the
view of Alida. The sight of that free-limbed courser,
and the thought of escape which its appearance
suggested, awakened a fresh yearning for freedom
that was all but maddening. But neither the horse
nor the rider ever appeared again.

As the winter set in, however, a change of scene,
if not a release from imprisonment, was soon to be
realized by the unoffending captive. Bradshawe,
alarmed for the security of his prey, had written to
Valtmeyer by the runner who had brought him a
missive from that worthy confederate, giving a glowing
account of his successful adventure. His letter
urged Valtmeyer to lose no time in moving Miss
De Roos from so dangerous a neighbourhood. For

[figure description] Page 195.[end figure description]

Alida's friends were scouring the country round for
traces of Thayendanagea's captive.

Her fickle-minded but high-spirited brother, so
far from slackening in his endeavour to rescue her
after the first ill-starred attempt already commemorated,
had twice beaten up the Mohawk's quarters
with a strong band of border yeomanry; nor did he
give up dogging the movements of Brant until the
chief had crossed the frontier and passed into Canada
for a season. Despairing, then, of recovering
his sister by the means hitherto used, Derrick had
made his way to the head-quarters of the patriot
army, where, offering his sword to his country, he
lived in the hope of obtaining tidings of the lost Alida
through the medium of the first flag of truce that
should be sent to the royalist generals in Canada.
Balt, too, the humble but zealous friend of the
Hawksnest family, adopting less readily the belief
that Brant had removed his captive across the frontier,
had, after accompanying Derrick in his bootless
wildwood quest at the north, renewed a diligent
search among the haunts of the Tories nearer home.

It was the restless and prying offices of this faithful
fellow—which Valtmeyer, with characteristic hardihood,
seemed to make light of when detailing them to
his employer—that awakened the anxiety of Bradshawe
for the better security of his prize; and his
letter designated a remarkable cavern in Schoharie
county, well known both to the outlaw and his ruffian
principal as the best retreat for security; and it
commanded that, as soon as the winter snows should
allow of easy and rapid transportation, a covered
sleigh should convey Alida, her two attendants, and
such furniture as would be indispensable, to this
dungeon fastness. A valuable farm on the German
Flats, with the promised manumission of the African
servants, who were actually the slaves of

[figure description] Page 196.[end figure description]

Bradshawe, was the promised reward for these services
if they should be faithfully and effectually rendered.

This letter was the last communication which
Bradshawe had held with the lawless instrument of
his crimes. He was now about to realize how far
his behests had been obeyed. He burned with
impatience to ascertain the result of Valtmeyer's
machinations, and he ground his teeth in wrath at
the thought that the momentary quailing of his spirit
before that of Brant had betrayed his secret, endangered
his final triumph over Alida, and perhaps
compromised the safety alike of his confederate and
himself. His horse had long since become way-worn
and jaded; still it was scarcely possible that
Brant, though he might have taken a more direct
course for the cavern, could on foot accomplish the
journey as soon as himself. His rage and vexation
at the bare possibility were for a moment insupportable;
and then, as he ferociously vented his feelings
upon his tired steed, struggling now with difficulty
through the deep snowdrifts, he became calmer
the next instant upon remembering that Brant was
alone, and that Valtmeyer, in performing his duty
of castellan, might possibly despatch the officious
and insolent Mohawk.

In the mean time, as the short winter's day approached
to a close, Bradshawe himself began to
suffer for the want of refreshment; and he was
compelled to admit, at last, that it was impossible
for his horse to proceed farther, and that he would
prove useless on the morrow unless the wants of
the animal were soon administered to. And, fortunately
for both, an asylum soon presented itself in
the deserted cabin of some fugitive settler, whom
fear of the Indians had driven from his solitary
clearing in the forest to some safer home.

storm of rain and sleet set in a few moments

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after the horsemen gained this welcome shelter;
but he heeded not its peltings without, as, after
tethering his horse in one corner of the shanty, he
kindled a fire upon the hearth, and by its light discovered
a pile of unshocked corn, which he soon
laid under contribution, both for himself and his
steed. He foddered the horse, while still heated,
with the dried blades and husks only, busying himself
in the mean time with shelling the ears. The
grain thus procured was partly pounded up, and,
by the aid of snow-water, converted into hoe-cakes,
which were soon roasting by the fire. The rest of
it, with a dozen more loose ears, he placed before
his horse after this frugal supper was served; nor
did Bradshawe resign himself to rest before, like
an experienced trooper, he had well groomed his
noble steed, by using the husks and cobs of the
maize as a substitute for the straw whisp and brush,
to which the animal's glossy coat showed he was
accustomed. His fire, in the mean time, he fed with
an armful of fuel from the same pile which had
supplied him with provisions. It blazed up so as
to fill the whole cabin with a ruddy light as the dry
blades were first ignited, crackled and sputtered for
a few moments as the grains of corn became parched
and split by the heat, and then subsided into a
bed of glowing brands as the dry cobs were seized
upon by the element.

“And why,” thought Bradshawe, as, wrapped in
his cloak, he now stretched himself out for repose,
“why may not the burning of this indigenous plant
be emblematic of the career of the thousands of my
countrymen who are reared almost upon it alone.
Here is the quick flash of their first outbreak of rebellion,
the noisy sputtering far and wide, in which
men more wise than myself thought that it would
vent itself and have an end. And here are the live

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coals at the bottom, that will burn on steady through
this long winter's night!—Pshaw! what care I,
though, if men are such asses as to light the fire, so
I only can warm my fingers by the blaze?” And,
concluding his unwonted strain of thought with this
characteristic reflection, the worthy trooper resigned
himself to slumber.

The dawn found Bradshawe again upon his journey.
But the rain of the preceding night, followed
by one of those mild, foggy days which sometimes
occur in midwinter, made his road a difficult
one: the half-thawed snow was converted into slush,
which, yielding and slipping beneath his horse's
feet, made the track at once heavy and insecure.
The rivulets upon the hillside too, released for a
brief period from their icy fetters, were swollen
frequently to torrents, which were absolutely perilous
in the passage. The road he was traversing
could scarcely, indeed, be dignified with the title of
a bridle-path; and though the cavern toward which
he was urging his course has of late years been
frequently visited by the curious, it would be difficult
to designate the route by which Bradshawe
had hitherto approached it by any precise geographical
data of the present day.

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