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The mingled yarn of our story is now becoming
so complex, that, to follow out its details with clearness,
we must pause to take up a new thread which
at this moment becomes interwoven with the rest.

The faithful Balt had been almost the only visiter
admitted to the Hawksnest during the last few
months that immediately preceded the withdrawal
of Miss De Roos from her home. The old forester
seemed to have conceived a kind of capricious
liking for little Guise, the half-blood child; and
as his visits were really paid to that ill-omened
urchin, though his excuse for coming was to ask
after the health of Miss Alida, and to inquire if she
had any news of the major, Miss De Roos never
thought it worth while to deny herself to her humble
friend, even while practising the strictest seclusion
in regard to her other neighbours.

Balt, in the mean time, was too observing a character
not to notice that some secret grief must be
preying upon Alida; and his new-sprung interest in
little Guise soon became secondary to the feelings
of concern which her fast-fading health awakened
in the worthy woodsman.

It chanced one day that Alida, who not

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infrequently took occasion to employ his services in
some slight task, which, while remunerating his
trouble, would give him occupation while lounging
about the premises, pointed out a magnolia which
she wished removed to another part of the shrubbery,
in the hope that a more favourable situation
might revive its drooping condition. Balt readily
undertook the task of transplanting it, while Alida
looked on to direct him during the operation.

“Now, Miss Alida,” said the woodsman, striking
his spade into the earth, “I don't know much of the
natur of this here little tree, seeing as I never happened
on one in any woods I've hunted over; but
I rayther mistrust the winds have but little to do
with its getting kinder sickly, as it were, in its present
situation, I do.”

“And why, Balt?”

“Why, you see now, ma'am, if the tree were attackted
from the outside, it's the outside would first
feel it; the edges of the leaves would first crumple
up and turn brownish like, while the middle parts
of them might long remain as sleekly green and
shiny as the edges be now. There's something,
Miss Alida, at the heart, at the root, I may rayther
say, of that tree; something that underminds it and
withers it from below. And these sort o' ailings,
whether in trees or in human beings, are mighty
hard to get at, I tell ye.” As the woodsman spoke
he leaned upon his spade, and looked steadfastly at
Miss De Roos, who felt conscious of changing colour
beneath the earnest but respectful gaze of her
rude though well-meaning friend.

She did not answer, but only motioned him to go
on in his digging; and Balt, seeing that he had in
some way offended, resumed his work with diligence.
But the next moment, forgetful wholly of

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the figurative use he had made of his skill in arboriculture,
and speaking merely in literal application
to the task before him, he exclaimed triumphantly,

“There, you see, now, it's jist as I told ye, Miss
Alida; there has been varmint busy near the roots
of this little tree. Look but where I put my spade,
and see how the field-mice have more than half
girdled it. The straw and other truck which that
book-reading Scotch gardener put around the roots,
has coaxed the mice to make their nests there in
the winter, and they've lived upon the bark till only
two or three fingers' breadths are left.”

“I hope there's bark enough left yet to save it,”
said Alida, now only intent upon preserving the
shrub.

“There's life there, Miss Alida—green life in
that narrow strip; and, while there's life, there's
hope; and old Balt, when he once knows whence
comes the ailing, is jist the man to stir himself and
holp it from becoming fatal.”

As the woodsman spoke he again ventured an
earnest though rapid glance at the face of the young
lady; but this time she had turned away her head,
and, hastily signifying to Balt that he might deal
with the magnolia according to the best of his judgment,
she strolled off as if busied for the moment
in examining some other plants, and soon afterward
withdrew into the house, without again speaking to
him.

The worthy fellow, who, on his subsequent visits
to little Guise, had never again an opportunity of
seeing the protectress of the child alone, was deeply
hurt at the idea of this conversation having put
Alida upon her guard against listening to more of
these hinted suspicions that she needed his sympathy.
His natural good sense, however, prevented
honest Balt from apologizing for his officious

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kindness, or showing in any way that he was conscious
of having offended. He was, however, from this
moment fully convinced that some mysterious sorrow
was the latent cause of Miss De Roos's rapidly-fading
health, and he determined to leave no proper
means untired to get at the real source of her
mental suffering.

His first desire was to communicate instantly
with Greyslaer; but he had never been taught to
write, and his mother-wit suggested the impropriety
of trusting matters so delicate to a third party by
employing an amanuensis. In the mean time, the
cruelly-slanderous story of Bradshawe reached at
last the sphere in which Balt was chiefly conversant.
The first mysterious affair about Miss De
Roos had, as we have seen, been known almost exclusively
to the simpler class of her country neighbours;
but the dark tale, as now put forth by Bradshawe
and his Albany friends, originating in the
upper classes of society, soon descended to the
lowest, and became alike the theme of the parlour
and the kitchen, the city drawing-room and the road
side alehouse.

A heartless female correspondent of Alida had
first disclosed it to that unhappy lady, when alleging
it as an excuse for breaking off their farther intercourse;
but it was not till after her departure from
the Hawksnest that Balt heard the tale, as told in all
its horrid enormity among the coarse spirits of a village
bar-room. His first impulse was to shake the
life out of the half-tipsy oracle of the place, who gave
it as the latest news from Albany; but, upon some one
exclaiming, “Why, man, this is fiddler's news; that
we've all known for a month or more,” while others
winked and motioned toward Balt, as if the subject
should be dropped for the present, he saw that the
scandal had gone too far to be thus summarily set

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at rest. There was but one other move which suggested
itself to him, and that was to take instant
counsel with the party chiefly interested in the fair
fame of Alida. And Balt, within the hour, had borrowed
a horse from a neighbour, and started for
Fort Stanwix.

Pressing forward as rapidly as possible, he continued
his journey through the night, and thus passing
Greyslear on the road, arrived at his quarters
just four-and twenty hours after Max had so hurriedly
started for Albany. Balt surmised at once
what must be the cause for his abrupt departure,
and, as soon as possible, took horse again and retraced
his steps; borrowed a fresh nag from the same farmer
who had lent him the first, and pushed forward
toward Albany.

His journey was wholly uneventful until he had
passed Schenectady and entered upon the vast pine
plains which extend between that city and the
Hudson. But, fitly to explain what here occurred,
we must go back to Bradshawe and his comrade
Bettys, and trace their adventures from the place
where last we left them in the immediate suburbs
of Albany.

To enter a farmer's stable and saddle a couple of
his best horses was a matter of little enterprise to
two such characters as Bradshawe and his freebooter
ally; and now the pine plains, that reach away
some fifteen miles toward Schenectady, had received
the adventurous fugitives beneath their dusky
colonnades.

The remains of this forest are still visible in a
stunted undergrowth, which, barely hiding the sandy
soil from view, gives so monotonous and dreary
an appearance to the continuous waste. But, at the
time of which we write, and even until the steamcraft
of the neighbouring Hudson had devoured this,

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with a hundred other noble forests in its greedy furnaces,
there was a gigantic vegetation upon those
plains which now seem so barren.

The scrub oak, which is fast succeeding to
the shapely pine, had not made its appearance; and
the pale poplar, whose delicate leaves here and there
quivered over the few runnels which traversed the
thirsty soil, was almost the only tree that reared its
head among those black and endless arcades of towering
trunks, supporting one unbroken roof of dusky
verdure.

Bold and expert horsemen as they were, Bradshawe
and his comrade soon found it impossible to
pick their path amid this cavernous gloom in the
deep hour of midnight. They were soon conscious
of wandering from the highway, which, from
the impossibility of seeing the skies through the
overarching boughs above it, as well from the absence
of all coppice or undergrowth along its sides,
was easily lost. They therefore tethered their steeds
and “camped down,” as it is called in our hunter
phrase, upon the dry soil, fragrant with the fallen
cones of the pine-trees which it nourished.

So soon as the morning light permitted them to
move, they discovered, as they had feared, that they
had lost the highway without the hope of recovering
it save by devoting more time to the search of a
beaten path than it were safe to consume. They
knew the points of the compass, however, from the
hemlocks which were here and there scattered
through the forest, whose topmost branches, our
woodsmen say, point always toward the rising sun,
and resumed their journey in a direction due west
from the city of Albany.

An occasional ravine, however, which, though at
long intervals, deeply seamed this monotonous plateau
of land, turned them from their course, and thus

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delayed their progress; and, with appetites sharp-set
by their morning ride, they were glad to arrive,
about noon, at the earthen hovel of one of that
strange, half-gipsy race of beings known by the
name of Yansies, which, even within the last twelve
or fifteen years, still had their brute-like burrows
in this lonely wild. Even Bettys, little fastidious
as he was, recoiled from the fare which these “Dirt
Eaters,” as the Indians called them, placed before
him. But Bradshawe, while declining their hospitality
with a better grace, procured an urchin to guide
him to the highway, which he was glad to learn was
not far from the hovel.

They emerged, then, once more upon the travelled
road within a few miles of Schenectady and
at a point where they would soon be compelled to
leave it to make the circuit of that town. Their
horses were weary and in need of refreshment; and,
with their various windings through the forest, they
had spent nearly twelve hours in accomplishing a
journey which, by a direct route, the time-conquering
locomotive now performs in one.

The Yansie boy had left them; for the red hues of
the westering sun, streaming upon the sandy road,
made their way sufficiently plain before them.
Their jaded horses laboured through the loose and
arid soil, but still they urged them forward to escape
from the forest before the coming twilight. They
had ridden thus for some time in perfect silence,
when, upon a sudden exclamation from Bettys, his
comrade raised his eyes and looked anxiously forward
in the long vista before him. The road at
this place ran perfectly straight over a dead level
for a mile or more. The setting sun poured a flood
of light upon the yellow sand, from which a warm
mist, that softened every object near, seemed to be
called out by its golden beams. Bradshawe shaded

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his eyes with his hand to see if he could descry
an approaching object, while Bettys, who had already
drawn his bridle, motioned impatiently for
him to retire among the trees.

“Give me one of your pistols, Joe,” cried Bradshawe.
“It is but a single mounted traveller; I
can make him out now clearly, and I'm determined
to put a question or two to the fellow.”

“Well, captain, you know best; only I thought
it might be a pity to slit the poor devil's throat to
prevent his carrying news of us to Albany; and
that, you know, we must do if we once come to
speech of him.”

“How know you but what he may be a king's
man, and assist us—or a mail-rider, and give us
some rebel news of value? Draw off, Joe, and
leave me to fix him.” But Bettys had already trotted
aside into the wood, where he managed to keep
nearly a parallel route with Bradshawe, who, clapping
Bettys' pistol in his bosom, and loosing in its
scabbard the sword with which that worthy had
provided him in the first hour of his escape, now
jogged easily forward to meet the traveller.

As they approached each other more nearly, and
Bradshawe got a closer survey of the coming horseman,
there seemed something about him which
promised that he might not be quite so easily dealt
with as the Tory captain had at first anticipated.

His drab hat and leather hunting-shirt indicated
only the character of a common hunter of the border
or frontiersman of the period. But, though he
carried neither rifle on his shoulder nor pistol at his
belt, and while the light cutlass or couteau de chasse
by his side seemed feebly matched with the heavy
sabre of the Tory captain, there was a look of compact
strength and vigour—a something of military
readiness and precision about the man, which

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stamped him as one who might often have borne an animated
share in the fierce personal struggles of the
times; a man to whom, in short, an attack like that
meditated by Bradshawe could bring none of the
confusing terrors of novelty.

The stranger, who seemed so occupied with his
own thoughts as scarcely to notice Bradshawe in the
first instance, now eyed him with a curious and almost
wild gaze of earnestness as they approached
each other.

Bradshawe, on the other side, surveyed the borderer's
features with a stern and immoveable gaze, till
his own kindling suddenly with a strange gleam
of intelligence, he plucked forth his pistol and presented
it within a few feet of the other horseman.

“The rebel Balt, by G—d!” he cried. “Dismount,
or die on the instant.”

The back of the woodsman was toward the sun,
and his broad brimmed hat so shaded his features
that his assailant could scarcely scan them to advantage;
but if the suddenness of the assault did in
any way change the evenness of his pulse, not a
muscle or a nerve betrayed the weakness.

“I know ye, Lawyer Wat Bradshawe,” said he,
calmly, “but I don't know what caper ye'd be at in
trying to scare an old neighbour after this fashion—
I don't noways.”

A grim smile played over the harsh features of
Bradshawe, as if even his felon heart could be touched
by admiration at finding a foeman as dauntless
as himself.”

“Real pluck, by heavens!” he ejaculated. “Balt,
you're a pretty fellow, and no mistake; had you
trembled the vibration of a hair, I should have shot
you dead; but it's a pity to spoil such a true piece
of man's flesh if one can help it. Give me that

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fresh gelding of yours, my old cock, and you shall
go free.”

“Tormented lightning! Give you Deacon Yates's
six-year-old gray? That indeed! And who in all
thunder, squire, would lend Uncle Balt another
horse, if I gin up this critter for the asking?”

“Pshaw, pshaw! Don't think, old trapper, you
can come over me with your mock simplicity. I
don't want to make a noise here with my firearms,
so save me the trouble of blowing you through by
dismounting instantly.”

As Bradshawe spoke thus, the pistol, which, ready
cocked, he had hitherto kept steadily pointed at the
breast of his opponent, suddenly went off. The
ball grazed the side of the woodsman with a force
which, though it did not materially injure him, yet
fairly turned him round in the saddle.

The swords of both were out on the instnat, while
their horses, plunging with affright, simultaneously
galloped along the road in the direction which Balt
was travelling. With two such riders, however,
they were soon made obedient to the rein. Balt, in
fact, had his almost instantly in hand, while Bradshawe's
tired steed was easily controlled. But their
training had never fitted them for such encounters;
and the gleaming of weapons so terrified the animals,
that it was almost impossible for their riders
to close within striking distance of each other.

Balt, who had the advantage of spurs in forcing
his horse forward and keeping his front to his opponent,
had twice an opportunity of plunging his sword
into the back of Bradshawe, as the ploughman's nag
of the latter reared and wheeled each time their
blades clashed above his head; and it is probable
that the wish to make prisoner of Bradshawe, rather
than any humane scruple upon the part of the

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worthy woodsman, alone prevented his using the unchivalrous
advantage.

But now Balt, if he would keep his life, must not
again forego such vantage. A third horseman gallops
out from the wood, and urges forward to the
aid of the hard-pressed Bradshawe; and shrewdly
does the Tory captain require such aid; for his
horse, backed against a bank where the road has
been worn down or excavated a foot or more in
depth, stands with his hind legs planted in a deep
rut, and, unable to wheel or turn, must needs confront
the stouter and more active steed of the opposing
horseman, whose fierce and rapid blows are
with the greatest difficulty parried by his rider.
But the third combatant is now within a few yards
of the woodsman, who, as he hears the savage cry
of this new assailant behind him, wheels so quickly
that he passes his sword through the man in the
same instant that a pistol-shot from the other takes
effect in the body of his charger.

Oh! captain, the d—d rebel has done for me,”
cried Bettys, tumbling from his horse in the same
moment that Balt gained his feet, unhurt by the fall
of his own charger, and sprang forward to grasp the
bit of Bradshawe's horse; but that doughty champion
had already extricated himself from the ground
where he fought to such disadvantage. He met
the attempt of Balt with one furious thrust, which
happily failed in its effect; and, seeing a teamster
approaching in the distance, darted into the woods,
and was soon lost to the eyes of his dismounted opponent.

“Are you much hurt, Mr. Bettys?” said Balt, not
unkindly, as he now recognised the wounded man
while approaching him.

“Hurt?” groaned Bettys. “I'm used up

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completely. That cursed iron has done for me in this
world, Uncle Balt.”

“And I fear,” said the woodsman, gravely,
“you've done for yourself in the other.”

“No! by Heaven,” said the stout royalist;
“there's not a rebel life that I grieve for having
shortened. No! as a true man, there's but one
deed that sticks in my gizzard to answer for, and
that, old man, is a trick I played long before Joe
Bettys thought of devoting himself to the king's
lawful rights—God save him.”

“Pray God to save yourself, rayther, while your
hand's in at praying, poor benighted critter,” said
Balt, in a tone of commiseration, even while an indignant
flush reddened his swarthy brow. “Let
every man paddle his own canoe his own way is
always my say, Mr. Bettys; but you had better
lighten yours a little while making a portage from
this life to launch upon etarnity.”

“Yet I meant it not—I meant it not,” said the
wounded man, unheeding Balt. “Wild Wat swore
it was but a catch to serve for a season; that he
would make an honest woman of her afterward.
But this infernal story—that boy too—oh—”

Balt, with wonderful quickness, seemed instantly
to light upon and follow out the train of thought
which the broken words of the wounded man thus
partially betrayed; and yet his aptitude in seizing
them is hardly strange, when we remember that it
was the full preoccupation of his thoughts with the
affairs of Alida which enabled Bradshawe to take
him at disadvantage so shortly before. He saw instantly,
or believed he saw, that Bettys' revelation
referred to her; but, having as yet only the feeblest
clew to her real story, it behooved him to be cautious
in betraying the extent of what he knew. He
did not attempt, therefore, to question the wounded

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man as to what he had first said, but only to lead
him forward in his confession.

“Yes, the boy—the poor boy—and his father—”
said he, partly echoing the words of Bettys as he
bent over him.

“His father? Yes, Dirk de Roos left mischief
enough behind him to punish his memory for that
wild business. But we were all gay fellows in those
days—” some pleasant memories seemed to come
over Bettys as he paused for a moment; but he
groaned in spirit as he resumed, “and Fenton, too,
Squire Fenton, who took the deposition of the squaw—
they're gone, both of them—they are both gone
now, and I—I too am going—where—where—”

The loss of blood here seemed to weaken Bettys
so suddenly that he could say no more. The approaching
wagoner had by this time reached the
spot: and when Balt had lifted the fainting form of
the wounded Tory into his wagon, and bound up his
wounds as well as he was able, the teamster willingly
consented to carry Bettys to the nearest house
on the borders of the forest.

In a few moments afterward, Balt, having caught
Bettys' horse, which was cropping the herbage near,
threw himself into the saddle, made the best of his
way back to Schenectady, got a fresh nag, and hurried
with all speed to the Hawksnest.

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