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The low, flat, narrow tongue of land, formed by two estuaries
of the Atlantic, upon which stands at this day the venerable
and wealthy city of Salem, had been, until about two years
previously to the commencement of our story, entirely without
inhabitants. The great and singular mortality, called by some
contemporary writers, the plague, which had swept away the
Indians so fearfully, at a period just previous to the arrival of
the pilgrims at Plymouth, as to prostrate their strength, and to
open their territories, as it were, to the footsteps of the white
men, had been equally terrible in its devastations along the
whole coast, and far into the interior of Massachusetts. Naumkeak,
if it had ever been occupied by the Indians, had, at any
rate, lost its native population, whether by death or desertion,
and was in 1626 a silent and savage wilderness, untenanted save
by the wolf and the bear.

Among those persons, numerous at that time in England, of
good “quality, figure, and estate,” who were disheartened by
the movement towards papacy of the English hierarchy under
the new reign of Charles I., was a certain Walter Ludlow.
Sprung of an ancient lineage, and inheriting a respectable fortune,
he had for the first few years of his manhood taken but
little interest in affairs, either of church or state. In that age,
however, of religious excitement, apathy upon such matters was
rare. Religion was the heart and soul of the times. The long
smothered fires lighted with torches, snatched from the funeral

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piles of a thousand martyrs, were at last breaking out with
devastating fury throughout the breadth of Europe. The
flaming sword of God seemed, in the eyes of bigots and enthusiasts,
to wave the human race on to battle, and armies of
Christians crusading against Christians filled the air with their
hostile shouts, and shook the soil of Christendom to its centre.
From many a sacked and burning city, smoking like a sacrifice
of blood and fire to the savage Deity, whom they worshipped in
the name of Jesus of Nazareth, arose the wail of outraged
women — the shrieks of butchered age or helpless infancy,
mingled with the roar of cannon, the yells of triumph, the
curses of the dying — a confused and hideous din, by which was
manifested the baleful presence of religious war.

In such an age, to be indifferent in religious matters was
difficult. It was almost impossible to avoid being a bigot, or
enthusiast, or, what was most usual, both. Walter Ludlow,
whose soul was first awakened to deep religious contemplation,
upon the death of the wife of his youth, who was taken from
him, after they had laid their two children in the grave, became
converted to the principles of Puritanism during a brief and
accidental visit made by him at Leyden.

Ludlow was naturally a man of a melancholy and enthusiastic
character, to which his domestic affliction, and his subsequent
religious conversion, had imparted a deeper and a sterner tinge.

He despaired of seeing the day-star of a brighter morning
ever rise upon the land, and his thoughts turned to the wilderness.

With his young and beautiful sister, the only person near of
kin to him, who had been his sole companion at his desolate
fire-side, who had been willing to share his sorrow, as she had
shared his joy, and who deeply and enthusiastically sympathized
in his despondency as to the prospects of their religion, he had
at last embarked for New England.

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Belonging to no particular religious association, he had at
first visited and sojourned awhile at the infant colony of Plymouth,
but, from a variety of reasons, not being satisfied with
his residence there, he had removed not a great while before the
period of our tale to the neighborhood of Naumkeak, to which
place the scanty remnant of the Cape Ann colony had removed.

It was a few days after the events recorded in the last chapter,
that Walter Ludlow and his sister Esther were wandering upon
the wild and wooded peninsula, near which they had established
their temporary home.

“This chill breath from the sea, these gloomy and leafless
forests, this silent solitude which enwraps us as with a mighty
funeral pall,” said Ludlow, “are but a sad exchange for the soft
airs and the opening blossoms of your old home, Esther. I fear
you will bitterly repent, ere long, that you followed the fortunes
of one whom God hath stricken, and sent into the wilderness to
die.”

“Alas!” said Esther, “if the returning spring could
but warm the freezing current of your heart; if but a few
faded flowers could but revive again, which in old and happy
times blossomed about your pathway, I should regret nothing,
not even the garden flowers of England. Say rather that I
should regret only for your sake, that we have taken the
pilgrim's staff and scrip — for indeed you should have a bolder,
or at least a more elastic and hopeful heart, to struggle among
the heathen in this land of dark shadows.”

“Your existence was not broken like mine,” said Ludlow,
“your future was not like mine, a pathway through eternal snow.
Let the broken-hearted and world-weary man wear the cowl of
his solitude — let him wrap the desert about him even as a
garment of sackcloth. But I had forgotten, even thou hast
sorrow of thine own,” said Ludlow, pausing for a moment,
while his sister answered him with a suppressed sigh —

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“No, Walter,” said she, “I have no sorrows, no regrets of
mine own. I know to what you allude, but I have cast from
my heart an image which strove to impress itself there against
my will. A worldling, a scorner of our religion, shall never
hold the humblest place in my heart. One, who had dared to
mock at my faith, and even to sneer at your melancholy madness
and fanaticism, as he termed it, shall never cause me one
tear of regret at leaving the land of my fathers.”

“Alas!” said the moralizing Ludlow, “the world, like the
sea, engulphs our treasures. Beneath the tossing waters of the
world how sink our proudest hopes! There, sunk forever, lie
our joys, our ambition, our love, all the ingots of our heart cast
from us in the storm, even as glittering robes, heaps of uncounted
gold and priceless gems lie buried in the depths of
ocean! But think you, Esther, that Maudsley hath already
forgotten and forsworn you? I always thought there was much
good in him, and he might have been yet saved even as a brand
from the burning. Think you never to behold his face again?”

“Never,” said Esther, sternly conquering an emotion which
seemed to have more power over her heart than her spirit.
“Never,” said she firmly, “for I have set up my staff forever in
this wilderness, and have bade farewell forever to our ancient
home, and you surely cannot believe that the gay and careless
Henry Maudsley, caressed by the world, and loving its caresses,
is likely to abandon the pleasures of his youth and station in
England, to take up his abode in the deserts of the new world.”

“I know not, Esther, Maudsley is of an adventurous disposition,
impressionable, wayward, but of a deeper and a stronger
nature, I think, than you believe.”

“You judge him too generously, I fear,” said Esther. “But
what is he to us? We have looked our last upon him — for
believe me, the wilderness is no place for him — the ocean rolls
between us forever.”

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The conversation here ended abruptly — Ludlow saying that
he had papers to examine, turned back to their residence. This
was a rude but extensive log-house, which stood on the edge of
the forest, surrounded by a small plot of garden ground. In
its neighborhood were two smaller buildings of the same character,
appropriated to the half dozen bound servants whom
Ludlow had brought with him, and the whole precinct was
inclosed with a ten foot palisade, formed by unbarked trees
driven close together into the earth, presenting an humble but
picturesque appearance.

Esther sat musing long and deeply upon the rustic seat,
formed upon the stump of a gigantic oak, where she had been
conversing with her brother. It seemed a strange effect of
destiny, that so beautiful a creature, well born, accomplished,
and gifted with higher and stronger intellectual powers than
often falls to the lot of woman, should thus be seated musing
alone in that wild forest. Esther was beautiful. Her features,
although distinguished by an extreme purity of outline, possessed
great mobility and variety of expression; her fair hair was
smoothed placidly from a forehead, which, as in all classic faces,
was rather low, but of madonna-like breadth and pensiveness;
her eyes were long and full, and thoughtful rather than passionate.
Her sad-colored garments, of the unadorned simplicity
affected by the Puritan women of England, were not unbecoming
to a figure slightly exceeding middle height, and possessing
the robust, healthful, but eminently feminine development characteristic
of English beauty, and heightened her resemblance to
those types of virgin grace and purity, the early madonnas,
painted by Raphael, while something of Perrugino's severity still
lingered around his pencil.

Wearied with her solitary reflections, she at last arose and
wandered through the open glade which stretched from the edge
of the pine forest near their residence, and was ornamented

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with magnificent oaks of many a century's growth, and covered
with strong coarse grass, springing in wild luxuriance from the
virgin soil. She amused herself with gathering a few violets,
almost buried in the rank verdure, and sighed as she compared
their almost scentless petals with the delicious fragrance of their
sister flowers at home.

The oaks which studded the waving sea of turf around her,
brought to her remembrance the bosky parks and ancestral trees
of England, and the early birds of spring, filling the air with
their clamorous melody, as they darted from the ground, or made
the leafless spray vocal with their love songs, soothed her
thoughts, and bore them far away to softer and fondly remembered
scenes.

She had wandered insensibly farther from her palisaded home
than she intended, and was approaching a thickly wooded and
swampy forest of maples and birches, in which the glade was
terminated, when she was suddenly startled from her reverie, by
a low, suppressed noise, which strangely resembled the angry
growling of a dog. What was her horror upon looking up, to
behold a large wolf upon the verge of the thicket, standing
motionless with eyes glaring full upon her, twenty paces from
the spot where she stood.

The animal was as large as the largest sized dog, and might
have been mistaken for one, but for his small erect ears, pointed
snout, and long bushy tail, resembling that of a fox. Grisly
grey in color, broad breasted, lean paunched, with yellow green
eyes flashing savage fire upon her, he sat upon his haunches,
motionless, as if carved in stone, and fascinating the lonely
girl by his fixed and terrible stare.

The American wolf is a ferocious, but comparatively a
cowardly animal, and except impelled by famine is slow to
attack the human race. The winter had, however, been long
and stern, and these savage creatures had often hunted in droves

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about the neighborhood, preying upon the few domestic animals,
which the planters had brought with them, and filling the air at
midnight with their howlings. Esther was aware that the
courageous men, who inhabited that lonely wilderness, were
accustomed to encounter these brutes, single-handed, without
fear, and she had often been told that the animal would shrink
like a whipped cur from the attack of man. But thus, solitary,
and far from help, to be confronted with a ferocious beast of the
forest, was a fearful thing for a maiden nurtured all her life in
the security of a civilized land. Frozen almost to a statue with
terror, with marble cheek, rigid lips, suppressed breath, and
eyes almost starting from their sockets, she instinctively, and as
if impelled by an irresistible fascination, gazed full into the
eyes of her ferocious antagonist. The lion is fabled to crouch
submissively at a virgin's feet, but the wolf who cowers before
the strong man was never thought to be generous to the helpless.
Was it then the mysterious power of the human eye, which
seemed to exert its subtle and unfathomable influence upon that
compact mass of savage sinew, bone, and muscle, subjugating
the will which they should have instinctively obeyed, and checking
the wild impulse which would have driven the brute, with
one savage bound, upon its prey? Could it be fear that kept the
monster motionless, crouching, but glaring still with those eyeballs
of fire? Was it all real, or was her fearful foe but a
phantom of her heated imagination?

Her brain reeled, the vast and leafless oaks seemed to whirl
and dance around her; the mighty forest, swaying before the
rising wind, seemed to rush through the air, sweeping and
shifting from earth to heaven, as in the mad and bewildering
changes of a dream. The incessant and shrill notes of a
thousand singing birds thrilled in her ears like the warning cry
of invisible spirits. Every thing seemed to move and change
around her; there was a rushing in her ears, as of a mighty

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wind, and then all seemed growing black as a funeral pall.
She roused herself from the swoon which she felt was coming
over her. It was no dream, the woods had ceased to move, save
to the gentle impulse of the morning breeze; she was alone in
the wilderness, and there stood the gaunt wolf, with his glittering
teeth and fearful stare, motionless and threatening as
before.

She roused herself at last, and became perfectly calm. She
reflected that the beast who shrunk from the conflict with a
man, might even cower before the attack of a determined
woman.

She had a slight branch in her hand, which she had accidentally
picked from the ground in her walk — a dried, leafless,
last year's shoot, feeble as a rush, and held in the weak hand of
a woman. But she had aroused her spirit now; her heart throbbed
high with excitement, and the blood which had been chilled
bounded like impetuous fire through her veins. She advanced
a step forward, brandishing the weapon above her head, with her
eyes flashing full upon her adversary. The wolf sprang to his
feet, glared fixedly upon her, but stood motionless as before.
He seemed irresolute, whether to advance upon his antagonist,
or to retreat into the forest. She moved a step nearer, her nerves
quivering with strange excitement. It was a contest not of
strength, but of nerve; not of muscle, but of spirit. Her foe
remained motionless upon his feet. She advanced another step.
She was near enough to hear his suppressed breathing. Another,
and the wolf with a furious glare opened his armed jaws,
and uttered a long, dismal howl, which resounded fearfully
through the forest, and struck renewed terror to the heart of
the unprotected girl.

She paused again, as if paralyzed, and stood unable to advance
or to retreat, within ten yards of the ferocious brute, who
remained still glaring, and motionless, but seeming less

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intimidated than enraged. Esther's strength began to fail her — her
prayers froze upon her lips — her eyes grew dim — but, even as
they glazed, she saw the wolf springing towards her. Suddenly
the bushes of a remote thicket cracked beneath an advancing
step; the report of a firearm rang through the wood, and the
furious beast, bounding high in air, fell stone dead at her feet.

Exhausted by emotion, overwhelmed by the sudden change
from imminent and fearful death, to life and safety again, Esther
sank insensible upon the ground. The hunter, to whose sure
but distant aim her preservation was owing, struggled slowly
through the tangled and swampy thicket through which he had
plunged to her rescue, when suddenly a tall form, in a short,
dark cloak, and steeple-crowned hat, strode down the glade from
the opposite quarter, lifted the unconscious maiden in his
arms, and bore her towards her residence. That man was Sir
Christopher Gardiner.

A moment afterwards, a young man, in hunting attire, emerged
breathless from the thicket, and stood upon the spot where
Esther Ludlow had for a few moments endured such speechless
agony, and where, but for his prompt assistance, she must have
died a fearful death.

The youth was tall and slender, but active and muscular.
His chestnut love-locks, long enough to distract the whole congregation
at Plymouth, his clear, hazel eye, and regular features,
proclaimed his Anglo Saxon blood, which his bronzed cheek and
wild attire might have almost rendered doubtful.

Esther was gone, and there was nothing upon the sward save
the bleeding carcass of the wolf. The hunter spurned it contemptuously
with his foot, and then leaned, lost in thought, upon
his fowling-piece.

p285-057

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