CHAPTER I.
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In one of those rough and secluded
towns, situated in the heart of the Green
Mountains, is a picturesque little valley,
containing, perhaps, something over two
thousand acres of improvable land, formerly
known in that section of the country
by the appallation of The Harwood Settlement,
so called from the name of the original
proprietor of the valley. As if formed
by some giant hand, literally scooping
out the solid mountain and moulding it
into shape and proportion, the whole valley
presents the exact resemblance of an
oval basin whose sides are composed of a
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continuous ridge of lofty hills bordering it
around, and broken only by two narrow
outlets at its northerly and southerly extremities.
The eastern part of this valley
is covered by one of those transparent
ponds, which are so beautifully characteristic
of Vermontane scenery, laying in the
form of a crescent, and extending along
beneath the closely encircling mountains
on the east nearly the whole length of the
interior landscape, forever mirroring up
from its darkly bright surface, faintly or
vividly, as cloud or sunshine may prevail,
the motley groups of the sombre forest,
where the more slender and softer tinted
beech and maple seem struggling for a
place among the rough and shaggy forms
of the sturdy hemlock, peering head over
head, up the steeply ascending cliffs of
the woody precipice. While here and
there, at distant intervals, towering high
over all, stands the princely pine, waving
its majestic head in solitary grandeur, a
striking but melancholy type of the
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aboriginal Indian still occasionally found lingering
among us, the only remaining representative
of a once powerful race, which
have receded before the march of civilized
men, now destined no more to flourish
the lords of the plain and the mountain.
This pond discharges its surplus
waters at its southern extremity in a pure
stream of considerable size, which here,
as if in wild glee at its escape from the embrace
of its parent waters, leaps at once,
from a state of the most unruffled tranquility,
over a ledgy barrier, and, with noisy
reverberations, goes bounding along from
cliff to cliff, in a series of romantic cascades,
down a deep ravine, till the lessening
echoes are lost in the sinuosities of
the outlet of the valley. From the western
shore of this sheet of water the land
rises in gentle undulations, and with a
gradual ascent, back to the foot of the
mountains, which here, as on every other
side, rear their ever-green summits to
the clouds, standing around this vast
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fortress of nature as huge centinels posted along
the lofty outworks to battle with the
careering hurricanes that burst in fury on
their immovable sides, and arrest and receive
on their own unscathed heads the
shafts of the lightning descending for its
victims to the valley below, while they
cheerily bandy from side to side the voicy
echoes of the thunderpeal with their
mighty brethren of the opposite rampart.
Nor is the beauty of the minor features
of the landscape surpassed by the bold
grandeur of the main outlines. The interior
of the valley, for miles in extent,
uniformly slooping to the eastward, is
checked with beautiful alternations of
lawn and woodland, forever richly clothed
in their season with the wavy and lighter
verdure of the cultivated field, or the
deep-tinted and exuberant foliage of the
forest, while a thousand gushing rills
come dancing down from the surrounding
heights to meet the morning sun, and glitter
in his first smile, as he looks in over
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the eastern barrier on his return from his
diurnal circuit.
At the period of which we are about to
write, the rude dwellings of the small band
of settlers, who then inhabited the valley,
were scattered at different intervals along
the road, which entering from the south,
wound round the westerly margin of the
pond and passed off through the interlapping
mountains towards Canada. Of
these dwellings the largest, and most respectable
in appearance, was the one situated
in the most southerly part of the valley.
The old log house of the pioneer,
still standing in the back ground surrounded
by weeds and briars, had here given
place to a new framed house of one story,
which, together with the appearance of
the out buildings and the well cultivated
grounds adjoining, betokened a considerable
degree of thrift and comfort in the
circumstances of the owner.
Towards night on a beautiful summer's
day, at the time we have chosen for the
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opening of our tale, a young man and
maiden might be seen leaving the door of
the cottage we have described, and leisurely
taking their way across the pasture
in a direction to intersect the main road
at the termination of the clearing on the
south. The first named of this couple,
apparently of the age of about twenty five,
was in the full bloom of vigorous manhood.
His hardy, robust, and well formed
frame was graced with an open frank
and highly intel igent countenance, indicative
at once of an ingenuous disposition,
a light heart, and the conciousness of a
strong hand, with mental capacity to govern
and render it available—exhibiting in
his person a fine sample of the early imigrants
of Vermont, who were almost universally
men of uncommon physical powers,
and generally of moral qualities which
quailed at no ordinary obstacles—a fact
attributable, probably, neither to chance,
nor the peculiarly invigorating effects of
their climate, but to the natural operation
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of these very powers and qualities themselves,
which only could incite them to
forsake the ease and comfort of an old settlement,
with the certainty of encountering
hardships in a new one and enduring trials
from which men of common mould
would shrink with dismay. His fair companion
was evidently quite youthful.—
Her person was rather slightly formed,
but of closely knit and beautifully rounded
proportions, which were indebted for their
almost faultless symmetry to none of the
crippling arts of fashion, but solely to the
hand of unrestrained nature, giving a free
and graceful motion, and a step as light
and agile as that of the young fawn of
the mountains among which she was reared.
The complexion of her face, however,
was perhaps too dark to be delicate,
or to give full effect to the rich brown
tresses that encircled her high forehead
and fell profusely in natural ringlets down
her finely arched neck. And her features
also, though regular, were
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remarkable only for the wonderful vivacity of their
expression; though now, as she and her
companion pursued their way from the
house some rods in silence, her mind
seemed absent, or absorbed by some care,
her looks were quiescent and listless, and
her dark blue eye seemed sleeping in abstraction—
but now her lover spoke and a
thousand variant emotions came flitting
over her countenance—a smile of peculiar
sweetness played on her lips, her
cheeks were wreathed in dimples, and her
eyes fairly sparkled with a light of the
soul that seemed at the instant to have taken
perch within them:—
“May,” said he, “May, my girl, do
you know that I have invited you out for
this little walk only to bid you adieu, and
that too for a considerable season?”
“No!—surely!” replied the girl pausing
in her step, and looking up into the
manly features of her lover with an expression
of lively concern—“surely, you
are not going your journey so soon?”
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“Yes, May, I have a horse in readiness
at the village below, and thither I propose
walking to-night, to be prepared for an
early start for Massachusetts in the morning.”
“And how soon will you return?”
“Perhaps I may be absent nearly two
months.”
“So very long?”
“Most probably—my business is such
as may lead to delays—but why so concerned,
May? this one more absence and
then—”
“Yes, yes, I know what you would say,
but why is even this absence necessary?”
“It is but right that you should know,
May, and I will tell you—It is now nearly
a year since I contracted for the land
on which I made a pitch in this settlement.
The time for a payment when I
am to receive a title has nearly arrived;
and I am going to gather up the little pittance
of property which I earned with my
own hands, and left invested in my
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native state, when I departed for the wild
woods of Vermont, and which I now
need to enable me to meet this payment.”
“It is right then, I presume, that you
go, but yet I dread your absence.”
“Dread! I hardly dared hope that my
presence was so much valued, May.”
“How vain now!—no, no, I did mean
that—I have other reasons for dreading
your absence.”
“And what can they be, dearest May?”
“I have often thought I would never
disturb your feelings by the story of my
little troubles.”
“Troubles! and not tell me, May—
you surprise and disturb me already—
to whom should you confide them, if not
to me?”
“True, Mr. Ashley, true, if you take
the interest in me which you profess—to
you certainly if to any one would I confide
them. And indeed should any thing
happen to me in your absence in consequence
of their existence I should wish
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perhaps I had apprized you of the difficulties
which beset me—”
“O tell me, tell me, May.”
“I will—You already know that Mr.
and Mrs. Martin, with whom I have lived
from a small child, are not my father and
mother by relationship, and I am sorry to
say they are not more so by their treatment—
often, too often, have they made
me to feel that I am the child of other parents.”
“Why, surely you never even hinted
such a thing before, and I never suspected
any thing of the kind. They certainly
have appeared sufficiently kind to you
in my presence.”
“O yes, in your presence; and even
when you are in the neighborhood they
are more cautious in their cruelty, but as
soon as you are fairly out of the settlement
for any considerable absence, I
soon am made aware of it by other means
than the void of my feelings at the loss of
your society. You have been told of a
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pedlar who undertook to be my suitor the
year before you came here. That was
their work; and I never shall forget their
meanness in trying to unite me to that
vagabond,—to get me out of the country,
as I have often thought.”
`But what reason can they have for
such a treatment, and in what manner is
it exercised?'
`I am not sensible of ever have given
them any cause, and I cannot even guess
at the reason. As regards the manner,
it is no personal violence that I complain
of; but is it much less painful to be insulted,
despised—to see, know, and be
made to feel that I am hated?”
`No, May, no. This is indeed news
to me, but it must not, shall not be. I
will this moment return and see them,
and secure you a kinder treatment, or, as
sure as my name is William Ashley, their
house this day ceases to be your home.'
“Oh no! not for the world! not a step,
not a word,—if you love me, not a word
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to them of what I have told you. I would
not leave them at this late period,—I can
bear with them a few months longer, and
then—and then, who knows,' she continued
hesitating and blushing as she dashed
aside the tear that had gathered in her eye
at the recital of her wrongs, and looked
up archly to her lover, `who knows
whether I am then to find a better home?”
`Who knows? Ah, May, let the time
for proving this but arrive; for, by-all that
is true and sacred in honor, or in love, I
swear.'—
`O no, no, no!' interrupted the girl
with returning vivacity, and with that
playful tact, with which woman so well
knows how to quell the storm she has
raised in the less versatile bosom of man,
`O no, no, don't swear at me—I have enough
of that at home.'
The lovers, having now arrived at the
end of their walk, seated themselves amidst
a cluster of low evergreens on the
brink of a high bank, to indulge a while,
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before the final adieu, in that luxury of
love, the interchange of the mutual pledges
of affection on the eve of separation.
The scenery of the spot was well calculated
to enhance the natural interest of the
moment, and hallow it to their feelings.
Some twenty or thirty feet below, and almost
directly under their feet, the road,
just emerging from the woods, wound along
on a scanty jut, or shelf of the hill-side,
which immediately beyond, formed
a lofty precipice terminating in the stream,
that rushed in stifled murmurs swiftly
down its rugged channel, deeply embowered
in the overhanging forest beneath.
The cool spray, stealing through the dark
foliage of the lofty fir and spruce, whose
roots were grasping the rocky margin of
the stream a hundred feet below, and
whose wavy and attenuated tops now
seemed almost within the reach of the
hand, was visibly rising athwart the bright
pencils of the struggling sunbeams in glittering
vibrations to the heavens, and with
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grateful freshness came mingling on the
senses with the balmy odour of the birch
and gilead; while the seemingly low encircling
firmament canopied their heads
with that deep and rich cerulean so peculiar
to the woody glens of the Green
Mountains; and all around and above
them was breathing a purity, and shedding
a tranquil brightness beautifully emblematical,
alike of the innocent and unalloyed
affections of their gushing hearts,
and their sunny anticipations of the future.
Their enjoyment of these happy moments,
however, was soon to be interrupted.
Their attention was now arrested
by the sounds of clattering hoofs in the
road below; and turning their eyes to the
spot from whence the noise proceeded
they beheld a single horseman urging,
with cruel applications of the whip, his faltering
steed up the hill towards the settlement.
When nearly opposite, or rather
under the spot where our lovers sat
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concealed from view by the boughs of their
covert, the horse paused, staggered an instant,
and fell with his rider to the ground.
The poor animal after a few convulsive
flounderings, gasped feebly, and died on
the spot. `Damn the luck!' exclaimed
the traveller, giving the dead carcass two
or three spiteful kicks, `damn the luck, the
horse is dead! However,' he continued
after a short pause occupied in taking a
hasty glance up and down the road, and
then over the precipice, `however, dead
horses like dead men, will tell no tales—
that is, if well buried. And here's grave
enough down this bottomless gulf in all
conscience, I should think—so now for a
speedy funeral.' So saying and hastily unlacing
a small valise, attached to the crupper
of the somewhat tattered saddle, and
filled apparently with clothing, he grappled
with main strength the body of the
horse, and rolled it off the precipice, down
the steep side of which it was heard heavily
bounding through briars, bushes, and
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fallen tree tops, till it struck with a faint
splash in the water below. With another
rapid glance thrown cautiously around
him, he took his valise under his arm, and
proceeded leisurely on towards the settlement.
`I am so glad he is gone, and without
discovering us!' half audibly exclaimed
May, the first to rouse from the mute surprise
with which they had witnessed the
whole transaction that so suddenly came
and terminated, like the detached scene
of some panoramic exhibition passing quickly
before them, `I can breathe again now.
How strangely he talked to himself!—
Don't you think his conduct very singular?
'
`Singular enough!' replied Ashley, `but
he really displayed some cool philosophy
in the death and burial of his horse, as he
termed tumbling him down the gulf.'
`Who and what can he be?'
`I am puzzled to conjecture. But I am
inclined to believe him some watched
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smuggler, who was riding for life to meet
and secrete some goods he may have coming
in this direction. These gentry often
take this back road for their excursions,
I am told.'
`It may be so, but I did not like his appearance
any better than his actions; how
suspicious he looked round to discover if
any one was in sight! And how cruel to
beat his horse so, and then kick the poor
creature as he was dying!'
`Nor did I like the appearance of the
fellow at all, and I confess I am not quite
satisfied with my own solution of the affair;
but I have no further leisure at present
to bestow in useless conjectures—perhaps
one or both of us may learn more
hereafter that will throw light on the subject.
And now, May, my dearest May, I
must go, leaving you to return to the house
alone.'
`O, not yet.'
`Indeed and indeed I must linger no
longer—see! the sun is nearly to the
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mountains. But once more, May, do you
love me?'
`O, too much!'
`And will be true?'
`Forever!'
`Then, dearest girl, may the great one
above us preserve you,—farewell, farewell!
'
`Farewell!' sighed the tearful girl in
accents soft and broken as the dying murmur
of the distant cascade with which they
mingled on the air. An instant, and Ashley
stood in the road below giving the last
lingering look of parting,—another, and
he had disappeared from the sight of his
sorrowful companion who slowly and pensively
pursued her lonely way back to her
now, more than ever, dreary and joyless
home at the cottage we have already described.
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CHAPTER II.
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The owner of the cottage, as the reader
is already apprised, was a Mr. Martin,
who with a few others had made, many
years before, the first permanent settlement
in the valley. They had purchased
of one Colvin, a resident of the small
village, to which allusion has before been
made, situated some six or eight miles below,
in the southerly corner of what had
now become an organized town embracing
the greatest part of this settlement
within its boundaries. This man had formerly
acted as agent to Harwood, the original
proprietor of the whole valley, in
disposing of the same lands to others which
he subsequently sold to Martin and his
companions as principal, the first occupants
becoming sick of their bargains, or
proving too poor and thriftless to pay for
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their farms, having abandoned and left
them, before receiving any but defeasible
titles, with their few scanty improvements
to more able and enterprising successors.
About the time of this desertion of the
first settlers, or rather squatters, perhaps,
they might be termed, Colvin made a journey
to the sea-port in New Hampshire
where Harwood resided, and returned with
the story that he had bought out the original
proprietor, and was now sole owner
of the valley. He then immediately set
to work in searching for purchasers; and
by his unwearied exertions in this respect,
and the inducements held out by the smallness
of his reduced prices, he soon
succeeded in finding money purchasers
for all the valley thought capable of improvement.
This he had no sooner effected
than he suddenly left that part of the
country and was heard of no more. From
this time the settlement made rapid progress
in improvement; and many of the
families there now permanently located,
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among which was that of Martin, were, at
that period of our tale, in comparatively
easy and comfortable circumstances.
Martin and his wife having no children of
their own had taken May, the heroine of
our story, when quite young, and adopted
her as a daughter.—Of the girl's parentage
little or nothing had ever been ascertained.
Her mother, it appeared, had been
taken ill on the road in a neighborhood on
the borders of New Hampshire, and gained
admittance into a private family to remain
during her confinement. The man
who attended her was not her husband,
but, as he stated, a person employed to
convey her to her friends in Vermont.
And pretending to give her name and residence,
and leaving a sum of money with
the family amply sufficient for the present
support of the mother and her expected
infant, he immediately returned, for the
purpose, as he avowed, of apprising her
husband of her situation. The young
woman, for so she seemed, in a few hours
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gave birth to a daughter; not however
without the cost of her own life; for she
was soon seized with a fever and delirium,
which in two or three days put a period to
her existence. The infant was handed over
to nurse to a married daughter of the
family who resided with them, and who
kindly received the little stranger to share
with her own child that nourishment of
which it had been deprived by the untimely
death of its mother. After a few weeks
had elapsed, no one in the mean time appearing
to claim the child, a letter was sent
to the address of the supposed father, but
without bringing from any one either a
visit or an answer. Recourse was then
had to the post-master of the town which
had been given as the residence of the husband;
and in consequence information
was soon received that no person or family
of that name and description had ever
resided there. And as no other intelligence
was ever after received on the subject, and
neither any remarks of the deceased
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mother during the few hours of her rationality
after her arrival, nor any thing found among
her effects, affording the least clue for
unravelling the mystery, the transaction
was very naturally concluded to be one of
those frauds often practiced to palm off as
respectable some frail fair one and her illegitimate
on strangers. The little innocent
subject of these suspicions, thus left
unknown and unowned among entire strangers,
was not, however, on that account
neglected. Having been at first whimsically
termed the May flower, and finally
May, from the circumstance of her having
been born on the first day of the month of
that name, she received the kindest attention
from the family till nearly two years
of age, when, becoming a pretty and promising
child, she was taken by Martin, who
then, and for some years afterwards, resided
in that neighborhood, from which he
removed to his present residence in the
valley. During the first years of May's
adoption, and till the removal of Martin to
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Vermont, she was allowed, summer and
winter, the advantage of an excellent common
school, in which she was distinguished
for uncommon proficiency for her age.
And the taste for reading, which she here
thus early acquired, was ever after maintained
and improved by means of a choice
selection of books, which Martin inherited
from his father and preserved out of
respect to his memory rather than for any
pleasure or profit they ever afforded him,
or his still more unlettered companion.
At this period also she was apparently much
beloved by both Martin and his wife, and
was uniformly treated by them with parental
kindness and attention. But as she
approached to womanhood, and began to
attract the esteem and admiration of all
who became acquainted with her by her
amiable disposition, her sprightliness and
beauty, this former manifestation of kindness
on the part of Martin and his wife began
unaccountably to decline; and instead of
receiving these demonstrations of esteem
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towards their deserving daughter with that
pride and gratification which real parents
would feel, they seemed to sicken at the
praises she received, and view them with
increasing uneasiness, giving vent to their
feelings at last on the innocent and distressed
cause of them in such bitterness of
manner and expression as to render her
often extremely miserable. And this treatment
was the more painful and perplexing
as it arose from no avowed or reasonable
causes, being founded probably in a
sense of growing inferiority, and a petty
jealousy at the preference with which she
was personally regarded, and the greater
respect which her intellectual superiority
always commanded, leaving her the most
hopeless of all tasks the endeavor to conciliate
those whose conduct arises from
motives they are ashamed to acknowledge,
and whose dislike has no other origin than
in the baseness of their own hearts.
A new era now occurred in the life of
May—the era of her first love. William
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Ashley, and intelligent and enterprising
young man, had been employed by a gentleman
of Massachusetts owning wild lands
in Vermont, to survey the tract lying west
of the settlement. Making the valley his
head quarters, and the house of Martin
his home on his stated returns from his laborious
duties in the woods, he became
interested in May—loved her, and was soon
loved in return with all the purity and fervor
with which a young maiden yields up
her virgin affections. The intimacy soon
resulted in an engagement of marriage,
and a determination on his part to purchase
a farm and settle in the valley; to
all of which Martin and his wife either
seemed coldly indifferent, or manifested
their dislike; though, as before intimated,
they had the year previous used considerable
management to induce May to consent
to the hasty proposals of one a thousand
times less worthy. Ashley having
now contracted for a farm in pursuance
of his resolution to settle in the place, his
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time had since been spent in alternately
improving his new purchase, and resuming
the avocation which had been the
means of introducing him into the settlement.
Having now given the reader a brief
sketch of the situation and characters of
the leading personages of our little story,
we will return to the thread of the narrative
where we left it for this digression.
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CHAPTER III.
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After parting from her lover, May lingered
almost unconsciously some time in
the vicinity of the romantic spot which
had witnessed their adieus—now listlessly
stooping to pluck some favorite flower
which peeped from its covert beneath her
devious footsteps, & now pausing to scratch
the initials of the loved one's name on the
back of some solitary tree, while her mind
was sweetly occupied with the pleasant
reminiscences of the past, or indulging in
those dreamy and bright imaginings of the
future which love and hope are forever
uniting to create in the bosoms of the
youthful. And it was nearly sunset before
she was aroused to the necessity of a
speedy return to her home. Now quickening
her steps, however, she soon arrived
at the door, and was timidly entering
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under the expectation of receiving some illnatured
reprimand from Martin or his
wife, as was their wont on her being long
absent from her domestic duties, when
with a feeling approaching thankfulness,
she caught a glance of a third person in
the room, whom she took to be some
neighbor, sitting with his back towards
her, thinking that his presence would protect
her from the anticipated rebuke, till
the occasion should be forgotten. But
this penalty she would have gladly suffered
the next moment in exchange for the
disagreeable surprise she encountered:—
For she had scarcely reached the interior
of the room before the person turned round
and in him she at once recognized the
man whose singular conduct she and Ashley
had lately witnessed with so much surprise
and suspicion. She instantly recoiled
at the unexpected discovery, and
stood a moment mute and abashed before
the painful scrutiny of his gaze.
`Why! what ails the girl!' exclaimed
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Mrs. Martin. `A body would think she
was afraid of strangers.'
`Perhaps, wife,' observed Martin with
a malicious smile, `perhaps May's walk
has confused her wits a little—these love-meetings
and love-partings are terrible
things to fluster one—ain't they May?'
`There!' rejoined the former in a tone
of exulting glee, `there! see how the girl
blushes! I guess she thinks the gentleman
may have seen her and her beau in
their loving ramble across the pasture.—
May be, sir,' she continued turning to the
stranger, `may be you witnessed the parting?
'
`No, I saw no one after leaving the
woods till I reached the house,' replied
the man with evident uneasiness of manner—
`Did you pass the way I came,
Miss?'
`I have not been in the road, sir,' answered
May, with as much calmness as
she could command in her fresh alarm at
the turn which the conversation now
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threatened to take, accompanied as the
question was with a tone and look of suspicion
for which she could readily account.
The inquiry, however, to her
great relief was pursued no further, and,
the conversation being now directed to
other and indifferent subjects, she retreated
from the room to hide her blushes, and
shed tears of vexation at the unfeeling and
wanton manner in which the secrets of
her heart had been exposed to a stranger—
and that stranger, too, the very one of
all others before whom she would have
been most anxious to avoid such an exposure,
coupled as it had been with her
walk which had put her in possession of
an unpleasant secret, as she feared it was,
respecting him. How unlucky! she
thought.—Perhaps even now she had become
the object of his suspicion and dislike.
She had intended, before so unexpectedly
encountering him on her return,
to make known the transaction she had
witnessed. But now should she do so,
-- 035 --
[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]
and the affair should be satisfactorily explained,
she dreaded the ridicule which
she probably must experience from all
parties for having acted the spy and cavesdropper—
and should it lead to the detection
of some villany, perhaps she would
have to be called into court as a witness—
a consequence which she no less dreaded.
She concluded therefore to keep the
whole transaction carefully locked as a
secret in her own bosom. Having come
to this determination, and having succeeded
by this time in allaying her disturbed
feelings, and in assuming, in a good degree,
a calm demeanor, she rejoined the
company, her repugnance to the stranger
being mingled with some curiosity to learn
more of his character, and see whether he
would mention the circumstance which
had so unfavorably impressed her and her
lover, and if so, in what manner he would
explain it. But in this she was disappointed,
as not the least allusion was then, or
ever afterwards, made by him to the
-- 036 --
[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]
transaction. May soon perceived, however,
that the stranger had already made rapid
progress with his host and hostess towards
gaining the footing of a familiar acquaintance;
and it was with some surprise that
she learned that he was to become for the
present an inmate in the family. He had
introduced himself, it appeared, by the
name of Gow, stating that he was traveling
with the view of purchasing lands; and
having heard that Harwood settlement
presented good inducements to purchasers,
he had now accordingly paid it a visit
for this purpose. This avowal had led
to a proffer of assistance on the part of
Martin to further the objects of the stranger,
and soon to a compliance with the request
of the latter to take up his abode in
the family while he remained in the place.
Such was the ostensible object of the stranger's
visit. This information May gathered
from her mother in the absence of the
gentlemen, who after supper had taken a
long ramble across the farm in the
-- 037 --
[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]
twilight of the delicious evening. But the
truth of the account which the man had
thus given of himself she felt much disposed
to discredit, for though the story was
simple and reasonable enough in itself,
she yet was wholly unable to reconcile it
in her mind with what she had witnessed;
and the more she reflected on the subject
the stronger became her suspicions that
there was something wrong in his character,
and something which he was making
an effort to conceal. During the course
of the evening May found frequent opportunities
for examining the personal appearance
of Gow (for by that name we
shall now call him) more closly than she
had before the means of doing. Though
young he was evidently considerably
hackneyed in the ways of the world, and
seemed well versed in the ordinary modes
of flattery and the art of insinuating himself
into the good graces of strangers. His
exterior was good, and his demeanor, with
ordinary observers, might have been
-- 038 --
[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]
prepossessing. But those who scrutinized
him more closely might easily have detected
a hollowness in his manner, which
showed that the heart was taking but little
part in the wheedling language of the
tongue, and a sort of questionable expression
in the glances of his restless eye,
which like the savage foe in the woods,
seemed to avoid open encounter, and to
be continually skulking away and back,
under the steady gaze of the beholder, as
if guarding hidden motives with a constant
apprehensiveness of their detection.—
Such at least were the impressions of May,
whose scrutiny instead of lessening had
now increased the dislike she had conceived
towards this person. Besides she was not
altogether pleased with his manner toward
herself. It was evident from his remarks
that his inquiries concerning her had been
already very particular; and he seemed
to address her with too much of the air
of an old acquaintance. In short she felt,
she scarce knew why, that he had some
-- 039 --
[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]
preconcerted object in view some way
connected with herself. And she retired
to rest that night with sensations of displeasure,
and with a disquietude of feeling
that she had never before experienced.
While such thoughts and undefined apprehensions
were agitating the guileless
bosom of May, the disagreeable object of
her reflections was occupied in another
apartment, to which he also had retired
for the night, in writing a letter to an absent
associate. For the benefit of the reader
we take an author's privilege of looking
over his shoulder.
`Well, Col. here I am, snug at Martin's,
where I am to remain, at present, gentleman
land-looker, as I call myself, till I put
other business in train. I arrived this afternoon—
sooner by some days than I expected,
having come not slow most of the
way, I assure you. The honest fact is,
I bought a horse at the end of the first
day's journey. `Bought!' you will say.—
-- 040 --
[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]
Yes of an old white cow I run afoul of in
the stable.—`What a mad cap!' you will
again exclaim, `thus to endanger the success
of our honest speculation.'—But the
fact was Col. I was getting on too slow for
my disposition, and—and I could not help
it. But the animal fell down and died
just as I was coming into the settlement;
and I rolled him off a ledge into the brook,
where he wont enjoy much more society,
I am thinking, but the fishes and foxes till
he is pretty well distributed. So no danger
from that little frolic. Now for the
girl—she is here, and no common affair
neither I assure you! Well formed,
handsome and knowing—indeed I fear
me she knows rather too much—at least,
that soul-reading sort of look of hers I
plainly see will require a pretty thick
mask. Besides Martin tells me she is engaged
to a young farmer, lately settled
here, but who luckily started a journey
for two months, just before I arrived.—
So you see I have got to push matters
-- 041 --
[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]
rather briskly; and it will be a hard case
if she don't find herself Mrs Gow before
the fellow returns. Lord! if she but
knew her own secret, or mine, I might as
well try to catch a lark in the sky by
whistling.
As to the other part of our projected
scheme, I am sure it will work well.—
Martin, whom, in my rapid way of doing
things, I have sounded in all shapes, informs
me that it is generally believed here
that precious metals lie hid in these mountains;
and I have already hinted my natural
faculties in seeing in the magic-stone[1]
(the wonders of which I find are still believed
in, among them,) and in working
the divining rods. Both of these marvelous
implements I shall very naturally find
in a day or two, probably; when I shall
open the golden prospect to Martin's
-- 042 --
[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]
greedy eyes, and if it takes, as we may safely
swear it will, I shall commence operations
immediately. So, old boy, you may come
on with your traps as soon as you receive
this, for I shall want you at all events—
I will look out the old cave you described
in the mountains, and have all things
in readiness by the time you arrive.
Yours in rascality, truly,
Gow.
eaf388.n1[1] The belief that there was a peculiar kind of stone in
which certain individuals had the faculty of discovering
hidden things by directing their thoughts to them, formerly
existed to a considerable extent in many parts of
Vermont.
-- 043 --
CHAPTER IV.
[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]
The next day was spent by Martin and
his new acquaintance in the woods, the
former acting as guide, as they rambled
over the adjacent tracts of wild land in
furtherance of the professed object of the
latter's sojourn in the valley. The next,
and the next, found them engaged in the
same employment, to the great wonderment
of May, who, knowing from the
course taken by them, and from their returns
to their daily meal at noon, that
their excursions were always short and
in the same direction, could not understand
the use of so much exploring for a general
examination of a few lots of land. She
was also led to notice that a deep intimacy
was growing between them; and she
soon perceived that they were engaged in
some secret purpose far different from
-- 044 --
[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]
that by which they pretended to be occupied.
Gow affected, in the presence
of the family, a knowing silence on the
subject of their employment, and frequently
pretended to check his friend as
the latter began to throw out hints about
new houses, improvements and purchases,
implying a sudden change in his circumstances.
All this, however, would have
but little interested our heroine, and might
have passed unheeded by her, had she
not motives of her own for watching the
conduct of Gow, whose character from
the first she had so much reason to regard
with suspicion, and whose increasing attentions
to herself, which could now no
longer be mistaken for ordinary courtesy,
and which grew every day more and more
annoying, furnished her additional reasons
for wishing to fathom his designs.
But it is time, perhaps, to apprize the
reader more fully of the project in which
Gow had enlisted Martin.
At the foot of a lofty mountain in the
-- 045 --
[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]
woods, about a mile northwesterly of Martin's
house, a few days after Gow's arrival,
these two personages might be seen
seated on a fallen tree, the one with his
face protruded into his hat which he held
in his lap, seemingly gazing at something
at the bottom, while the other was attentively
listening to the remarks, which, at
intervals, fell from the former. The dialogue
which now ensued between them
will sufficiently explain the nature of their
employment.
`Are you quite certain, Mr Gow, that
you have at last found the real genuine
sort of stone, which you have this wonderful
faculty of seeing things in?'
`O, quite sure. It is the same thin, oval,
yellow, specked kind of stone I used when
I discovered the pot of money on Cape
Cod, that they supposed Kidd buried there.
How provoking, to get only a hundred
dollars for that job, when I might have
gone shares with the men who employed
me, had I chosen it! But the fact was,
-- 046 --
[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]
Martin, I was not at that time entirely certain
that I possessed this faculty to so great
an extent as I afterwards found.'
`But what can be the reason that you
cannot see in the stone at one time as
well as another?'
`No one can exactly tell. A friend of
mine who has the faculty, and is deeply
skilled in these matters, supposes it is the
devil that casts a mist before the stone to
hide what otherwise might be discovered,
and this may be the case, or it is possible
that it may have some connection with the
weather or state of the air. I had a beautiful
clear view the first time I tried the
stone after finding it this morning, but as
my mind was running on scenes in my
own country, I made no discoveries of any
thing hereabouts, for the view had faded
away before I could turn my thoughts to
this spot. One must keep his mind intently
fixed on what he expects to discover,
and wait with patience till the stone
clears, and then if there is any thing to be
-- 047 --
[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]
found, he will be sure to see it, and all the
objects by which it is surrounded.'
`How wonderful! By heavens, if I only
had the faculty, I—
`Hush—hush—Martin, it begins to clear.'
`Does it? Mind and keep your thoughts
on the mountain, Gow. Do you see any
thing yet?'
`Nothing distinctly yet—nothing but
woods, and high hills with light misty clouds
resting on them in broken masses, which
seem to be dividing and slowly moving off.
Stay! what peak is that which rises in sight?
Zounds! Martin, it clears every instant;
and I can plainly distinguish the very
mountain we are under. Look along the
top of the ridge towards the north. Now
see if you discover a tall dry tree, pine, I
should think, standing just above a bare
rock.'
`Yes, there is the very tree, as I live,
and the rock too, by Jupiter! But do
you see anything else?'
`Be easy a moment—I just caught a
-- 048 --
[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]
glance of something glimmering further
down—but it appears to be gone now.—
There! I have it again right below the
tree; but down, down to the very foot of
the mountain. Now it comes!—brighter
than ever! Something of a white shining
appearance. Silver! silver! Martin,—
as true as I am a sinner—coined dollars
of silver, deep underground!'
`Oh heavens and earth!' exclaimed
Martin, leaping up and rubbing his hands
in ecstacy, `but mark the spot, Gow, where
it lies.'
`I have,' replied the other, taking his
face from his hat, `the view has all died away
now, and I shall not probably get another
at this time. But what a glorious
sight! Oh, my stars, if you could have
seen it! The first day we were out here,
when I strayed from you, as you remember
I did, I cut and tried a divining rod,
and from the working of it in my hand I
became satisfied that there was a treasure
near this mountain, as I afterwards hinted
-- 049 --
[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]
to you, but I certainly never dreamed of
such a mint of coined money. But come,
let us go to the spot, and put some private
marks on the trees as near the place as we
can hit by guess.'
So saying, Gow pocketed his magic
speculum, and hastily setting out for the
place just designated as the spot where
the treasure lay concealed, they soon came
opposite to the tall tree and rock before
mentioned, and halted close to the foot of
the mountain.
`There!' exclaimed Gow, looking round
and measuring the spot with his eye, `there!
Martin, within the compass of one acre around
us, I will stake my life, there lie buried
beneath the ground more than ten
thousand hard dollars; but,' he continued
with a look of mysterious gravity, `but it
may require much time and labor to find
it; and we may have to fight dead men
and devils, before we get fairly hold of it.'
`I will agree to fight both to their teeth,
-- 050 --
[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]
to get hold of a tenth part of that sum!'
cried the other in boastful rapture.
`Well, then,' said Gow, `we will now
begin to think of the project in good
earnest. But as it will take much hard
digging probably to reach the treasure—
more, doubtless, than we, with our single
hands, can ever expect to do, we shall be
compelled to form a small company of
four or five trusty individuals besides ourselves;
and then we shall be able to do
business to some effect.'
`Why, yes, but cannot we get along
without this?' said the avaricious Martin.
`We might then have all the money to ourselves.
'
`Ay, ay, if we could, and that were all,
but you must know that there are some
conditions to be complied with in this busincss;
for besides their labor, which we
shall need, you forget that I cannot exercise
my skill, in making you rich, for nothing;
and you will hardly be willing, or able,
alone, to raise the sum I shall make
you agree to give me before I go on.'
-- 051 --
[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]
`How much?' asked the other, with
symptoms of alarm.
`Not less than five hundred dollars.'
`What! five hundred dollars, and go
shares too?'
`Exactly, If I only went shares, what
should I get for my skill?'
`Yes, but five hundred dollars! it is extortion,
Gow, rank extortion! and I won't
give it—I will go alone first.'
`Go on then,' said Gow with a cool
sneer, `and we will see how much you will
make by money digging without me.'
`I did not mean any offence, Mr. Gow,'
rejoined Martin, in an apologetic tone, seeing
the determined manner of the other,
and fearful of pushing matters too far with
him, `I meant no sort of offence, but how
can I raise such a sum?'
`True,' said Gow, `I knew you could
not, and therefore had an additional reason
for proposing to form a company; and
this we must do—one hundred dollars apiece
will then be all that's required.'
-- 052 --
[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]
`And one hundred is more than I know
how to raise,' observed Martin despondingly.
`I shall be fair with the company,' said
the other without seeming to heed the last
remark of Martin. `I shall be honorable,
and to show them that there is no deception
in the business, I will not require them
to hand over the money till the first dollar
of the treasure is found—and then, before
the treasure is opened, they must have
it in readiness to pay over on the spot, and
let me go equal shares in all that is found,
These will be my conditions.'
`Well, I don't see why that is not all
fair.'
`And hark'ee, friend Martin, there is
one way by which I might perhaps let you
off from paying the hundred dollars, or even
any thing—if I thought—if—'
`If what?' eagerly asked the other—`if
there is such a chance for me, for heaven's
sake let me know it—any thing that I
can do'—
-- 053 --
[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]
`Yes, yes, Martin, but there is the trouble,
perhaps—for I fear you cannot do me
the favor I was thinking of, if you would,
and I don't know that I ought to ask your
interference—but I can name the case,
and then you can tell me, if you please,
what your notions are on the subject.—
You may have already perceived perhaps
that I have taken a fancy to your adopted
daughter, May Martin—'
`Why, yes, but what do you want of
her—it would give me a bad name if I
should have any hand in—'
`O, you quite mistake my intentions—
as I said I have taken a fancy to the girl,
and I have made up my mind, even on
our short acquaintance, to make a wife of
her, if she will marry me; but she appears
to be shy, and I suspect is determined to
refuse any offers I may make her. Now,
if, in this business, you feel disposed to assist
me—'
`O, if that is all, I will use all my influence
to persuade her to accept your offer.'
-- 054 --
[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]
`Yes, that you of course would do, if
you felt disposed to favor my suit. But
can't you so manage as to warrant my success?
Now what I was going to say, was
this, if you will ensure me the girl, I will
release you from paying me a cent in this
affair, that is, if you will bring it about
within a month.'
`A month!—that is a short time—why
such haste?'
`Why, it is always my way to do things
at a dash. I may as well marry now as
ever; and I trust we shall reach the treasure
by that time at least, when you otherwise
would have to pay me over the
money.'
`True, I had forgotten that. Well, we
will see what can be done. But how on
earth to bring it about, I know not. She
is engaged to Ashley, and no doubt is determined
to marry him, let who will come;
and he too is a bold, straight-going fellow,
who would not stand aside for a regiment.
`But he is absent.'
-- 055 --
[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]
`Yes, and that is lucky so far. If she
could be weaned from him before his return,
and she did not write to bring him
back upon us—'
`O, the last can be managed—but will
he write to her?'
`I presume so, but why that question?'
`I merely ask out of curiosity. But who
brings her letters from the village, where
they come, I suppose?'
`I shall, probably, myself, why?'
`Now suppose you should withhold the
letter, and never let her know any had
come for her?'
`That might have effect in making her
think she was neglected, perhaps.'
`And supposing you should let me take
the letter and write her one in imitation of
his hand, signing his name, and let you
give it to her?'
`Yes, but there would be no cheating
her in this way—she is keen as a razor—
I have sometimes thought she could tell
my very thoughts, the prying hussy!'
-- 056 --
[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]
`But I could cheat her though. I am
handy with the pen and could once imitate
any hand, so that the writer himself
could not tell which was his own.'
`That would be rather roguish would it
not, Gow? Besides, when Ashley returned,
he would raise Ned with you for such
a trick.'
`Why, I shouldcalculate to make you a
rich man—take the girl and be off to my
own country, long before he came back.
But I see you are not disposed to help me
and yourself in this business—'
`O, you are mistaken; I was only contriving,
and I begin to think we can manage
it—and if you intend to take her out of
the country, wife will lend a stiff hand, depend
on't. She thinks May is quite too
knowing, considering, and will soon get above
us all; and to tell the truth, I have
lately had a sort of a notion that the girl
would bring some bad luck to us, in one
shape or other. But take her away from
this place, and she will make a smart wife
-- 057 --
[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]
enough, I dare say. Gow, she shall be
yours, by hook or by crook, and there's
my hand on it.'
This last point being settled to the mutual
satisfaction of these worthy personages,
they then proceeded to discuss and
settle the details of the plan of operations
proposed by Gow for coming at the buried
treasure; the result of which was that
Martin should take upon himself the task
of forming a company from such of his
neighbors as he should select as most trusty
and best fitted for the enterprise. The
work was to be commenced as soon as a
company could be formed; to be carried
on in the night, and with all possible secrecy.
Gow was to superintend and direct
the whole business. And for the purpose,
as he told Martin, of guarding the spot, and
always being near to catch every view
which was to be had from his magic stone,
and of making frequent trials of the divining
rod, he was to erect a shantee on some
part of the mountain above, for his chief
-- 058 --
[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]
residence, till the treasure was found,
where no one was to presume, on any account,
to approach him, pretending that
he could only make his discoveries to any
advantage, when entirely alone. Here he
was to be supplied with provisions, &c.,
from Martin's house, to which he should
only repair, for the purpose of prosecuting
his suit with May. Their whole plan being
thus adjusted, they returned to the
house with the understanding that each
should proceed to his allotted part on the
following morning.
-- 059 --
CHAPTER V.
[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]
From this time every means was tried,
and every art put in requisition by Martin
and his wife, to forward the projected match
between Gow and their adopted daughter.
Their first attempts were confined to endeavors
to impress her with favorable sentiments
towards her new lover, and, at the
same time, to prejudice her mind against
Ashley and destroy the high estimation in
which they well knew she deservedly held
him. But not long resting satisfied with
their progress in this indirect method of
accomplishing their base purpose, they
soon proceeded to open importunities, using
every persuasion to induce her to yield
to their wish, and exhausting every argument
their ingenuity could invent, which
they thought likely to shake her still unaltered
purpose of fidelity to her betrothed
-- 060 --
[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]
lover, and turn her mind to the man of
their worse than mercenary choice. Sometimes
setting before her glowing pictures
of the wealth and splendor to be gained
by an union with Gow, and then contrasting
this with the life of labor and obscurity,
which they told her must be her certain
lot if she married Ashley; sometimes resorting
to flattery, followed by abject entreaties;
and sometimes to menaces and
bitter denunciations in case she finally refused
to comply with their wishes and
commands; till the poor girl felt as if she
must sink under their united persecution.
With the object of this unwearied intercession,
himself, she succeeded much easier
in securing herself from annoyance.
He had by this time proposed himself in
direct terms, and had received a decided
and unqualified refusal; and the simple
majesty of innocence, and virtuous rectitude
of purpose, all unprotected and discountenanced
as they were on all sides
conveyed a rebuke before which, with all
-- 061 --
[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]
his assurance, he could not help quailing;
and he shrank from the cold dignity of
her presence, leaving her mostly unmolested
by open attempts to soften her obduracy,
choosing rather to rely on intrigue
and deception to effect a design which he
was well aware any manly or honorable
course would fail of accomplishing. But
this new and unexpected attempt of Martin
and his wife, situated as she was, to
control her inclination and induce her to
violate her plighted faith, was much less
easily combatted, and doubly enhanced
her distress and perplexity. Their motives
for this cruel conduct, she soon rightly
conjectured, must arise from some advantage
to be gained by the success of their
endeavors—some tempting condition by
which Gow had bribed them; but why any
such advantage, or bribe should be offered
by the latter, she was wholly at a
loss to imagine. She felt satisfied that his
anxiety to obtain her hand did not proceed
from any love which he had so hastily
-- 062 --
[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]
entertained for her, and much less could it
arise, she thought, from any pecuniary or
other advantage, to be gained by marrying
a pennyless and obscure orphan. But
that such was his determined purpose, she
could no longer doubt, and it was equally
clear to her that her parents were closely
leagued with him in the design.—The
neighbors, too, it was apparent, from their
jokes and indirect advice to her, in their
intercourse with the family, had been biased
by the account which they had received
of the new comer, and had already arrayed
themselves on his side, and stood
ready to advocate his cause. While the
reluctance she had conceived to divulge
what she knew of him, or to say aught to
his disadvantage as long as he was a favored
inmate of her family, mingled with a
delicacy of feeling, forbidding her to discuss
the character of an avowed lover, all
combined to prevent her from trying to
undeceive her acquaintance in their opinion
of Gow, or to make known to any one
-- 063 --
[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]
the wretchedness and difficulty of her situation.
And had she attempted this, and
made known her difficulty, she knew not
that it would avail in changing the popular
current which she saw was now setting
in favor of Gow, or in alleviating her
embarrassments; she resolved therefore
to endure in silence, and though alone,
and unfriended, to persevere in her unshaken
determination of resistance, till the
return of Ashley should put an end to her
sorrows and troubles.
`What great object do you propose to
gain, May,' said Martin one day during
this ceaseless warfare against the peace
and happiness of the persecuted girl. `What
great object do you propose to gain by rejecting
such a man as Mr. Gow, and accepting
such a fellow as Ashley?'
`I shall at least gain the approbation of
my own conscience, father; for I have
promised him solemnly, and he told me
that he had your consent.'
`I might have said something of the kind
-- 064 --
[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]
perhaps, when I supposed you could do
no better; but these foolish promises which
boys and girls make to each other,—what
do they amount to? And how long does
either party hesitate about breaking them,
when finding they can do better with themselves,
they wish to make another choice?'
`But I have no wish to make another
choice, and if I had, I hardly think I should
gain much by the change you propose.'
`You don't pretend to compare Ashley
to Mr. Gow, do you?'
`Certainly, I should not wish to compare
him to this suspicious man—'
`What do you mean, girl? Would you
insinuate any thing against the character
of Mr. Gow—a gentleman, and a friend
of mine as he is?'
`I do not wish to say any thing about
him; but friend or gentleman, as you may
believe him, you would be much better employed,
I suspect, in guarding yourself against
his arts, than in trying to drive a
poor friendless and unprotected girl into
his clutches.'
-- 065 --
[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]
`What mean you, May Martin, once
more I ask?' sternly demanded he, stamping
on the floor. `What reasons for your
scandalous insinuations can you give?—
Speak—tell them if you have any. No
wonder you hesitate; for you have none
to give—'tis all but a foolish stubborn girl's
whim—prejudice against a man who loves
you, but who is too good for you, and condescends
too much in wishing to make you
rich and happy. I tell you, girl, you must
marry him!'
`O, I cannot, Father, never, never!'
`You won't then, will you? You forget
that you are not of age yet, and that I
have an indenture in that desk that puts
you completely under my control?'
`I forget nothing, Sir. I know my duty
and have always endeavored to do it;
and can you say as much respecting the
cruel course you are now pursuing towards
me? Does that paper to which you
so insultingly allude, give you the power
to dispose of me in marriage without my
consent, and against my inclinations?'
-- 066 --
[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]
`Hush impudent!' vociferated Martin,
again stamping in rage. `A lecture on
my duty, hey? Fine times I should think!'
`May don't remember,' chimed in Mrs.
Martin with a spiteful leer and taunting
tone, `May don't remember who took her
when she was a little ragged outcast, that
no father would come to own, and fed,
clothed and educated her, and gave her a
respectable home?'
`O, I have, I do remember it,' said May
bursting into tears, `I remember it all, and
would to heaven I could think of those
days of kindness without associating them
with later treatment—with this, this bitter
hour of insult and cruelty!'
`Come, come, you silly girl,' said Martin,
after waiting till her paroxysm had a
little subsided, and now changing his manner
into a half coaxing, half expostulating
tone. `Come, come, May, I did not mean
to hurt your feelings—I do not wish you
to do any thing but what I think is for
your good. You, yourself, will be as
-- 067 --
[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]
ready to marry Mr. Gow, as you are now opposed
to it, as soon as you find that Ashley
has left you for another sweetheart.'
`Ashley?' said May slowly taking her
handkerchief from her tear-bathed face,
and looking at Martin with an air of mingled
surprise and censure, `Mr. Ashley
will never do that.'
`Pshaw, nothing more likely!' responded
Martin, carelessly. `You don't know
William Ashley as well as I do.'
`Well enough, however,' replied May
promptly, `to know that he will never do
that—any sooner than I should voluntarily
leave him for your Mr. Gow.
`You would hardly dare promise to marry
Mr. Gow on condition of Ashley's desertion,
I suspect?'
`Indeed, I should, Sir!'
`Well, let us have your promise then.'
`I fear not to do it, Sir, on that condition,
' rejoined May in a tone of unsuspecting
confidence, `and if such a promise
will relieve me from any more persecution,
-- 068 --
[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]
and teasing to marry Gow, till Mr. Ashley
is false to me, I will make it.'
`Well,' observed Martin, with a well
feigned air of indifference, `I will take you
at your word. I suppose we must submit
to the condition, though I still say we do
not wish to force your inclinations, only so
far as we know is for your own interest.
And now, you have made this promise
May, I hope you will think, should this
condition be fulfilled, that it is as wicked
to break it, as you now do to break your
promise to Ashley.' So saying, and with
a treacherous smile on his countenance,
he left the room.
May marvelled much at the unexpected
termination of the dialogue which had begun
so differently, and threatened so different
an ending; and after Martin had retired,
she endeavored to draw something
from his wife which would go to explain
her husband's sudden apparent willingness
to drop his purpose for a promise made on
a condition which she felt so confident
-- 069 --
[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]
could never happen. But that dame, who
was naturally taciturn and cautious, and
who rarely ever betrayed the secrets of
her heart with her tongue, while her cold,
severe, and unvarying countenance was
generally equally proof against all scrutiny
on what was passing within, pretended
to know nothing of the affair, and, after a
few unsatisfactory replies, sunk into her
usual forboding silence. Our heroine,
therefore, being left to her own conjectures,
and, notwithstanding she felt some
little misgiving relative to her promise, and
an underfined suspicion that there was something
wrong about it, seeing, nevertheless,
no reason why it should be different from
what the circumstances purported, could
not but congratulate herself on the prospect
now presented, of a reprieve from
her persecutions, and the latter feeling prevailing,
she dismissed the subject from
her mind, and resumed her domestic occupations
with a cheerfulness to which
she had sometime been a stranger.
-- 070 --
CHAPTER VI.
[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]
For nearly a week from the interview,
just narrated, no allusion was made in the
presence of May to the dreaded subject of
a marriage with Gow; and in the respite
thus allowed her she began to hope that
her peace would no more be disturbed by
any further recurrence of those scenes
which had lately caused her so much distress
and perplexity. And this hope, added
to the cheering expectation she now
daily entertained of receiving a letter from
Ashley, imparted a new impulse to her
feelings, and was fast obliterating the remembrance
of her late trials from her mind.
But this happy quiet was not long to continue;
and like the deceitful calm of the
elements, which often precedes the fearful
tempest, soon proved to be but the prelude
to new and aggravated sorrows.
-- 071 --
[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]
`May,' said Mrs Martin one day, as
glancing through the window she saw her
husband approaching the house in company
with Gow; `May, did Mr Martin
bring you any letter yesterday from the
village?'
`Any letter!' replied May in surprise;
`bring me a letter! no; did be go to the
village yesterday? I knew nothing of
it.'
`Yes, he went,' said the other with an
affected common place air, `and I thought
likely he might have found a letter for you
there by this time—but here he comes
himself, and can tell you whether he enquired
for one—I'll warrant he did not
though, he is such a forgetful creature—
say, Mr Martin,' she continued, turning
to her husband, as he now entered the
room; `did you enquire at the post office
yesterday for a letter for May?'
`There now!' exclaimed Martin with a
seeming abashed and self-condemning
manner; `Well, if that don't beat all! I
-- 072 --
[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]
should not blame May for scolding now—
for, of all forgetful fellows I believe I must
be the worst.—Yes, I did call at the office,
and got her a letter from Ashley, I conclude,
and here I have carried it in my
pocket ever since!'
`O, how could you!—but where is it—
O where is it?' eagerly exclaimed the
animated girl, starting up and advancing.
`Here!' replied Martin, pulling out the
letter and presenting it; `here it is; and
now we shall see no more of you till that
is read and re-read a dozen times over, I
suppose.'
As the hungry bird darts upon the luscious
grape accidentally revealed to his
sight while wandering weary and famished
for food, so did May upon the valued
prize before her; and scarce was it within
her eager grasp before she bore it off,
with eyes sparkling with joy and triumph,
to another room, there to feast on its anticipated
contents which, in fancy, were
to thrill her own bosom with delight, and,
-- 073 --
[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]
at the same time, to furnish an ample refutation
of the unjust and ungenerous surmises
of Martin concerning the fidelity of
her beloved Ashley. No sooner was she
alone, than with trembling haste she tore
open the seal and read in the well known
hand of her lover, as she thought, as follows:—
`Miss May Martin,
`Knowing you would expect a letter
from me about this time, and considering
it a duty to apprize you of some changes
relative to myself, I have thought best to
write you briefly. On my arrival at my
old residence, I there met with one with
whom I once had considerable intimacy,
which was broken off by a misunderstanding
between us, and I supposed the separation
to be final.—That misunderstanding
is now, however, satisfactorily cleared
up, and with a renewal of acquaintance,
feelings which, when with you, I supposed
dead, have revived. I presume you
would not wish to marry a man who
-- 074 --
[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]
entertains a preference to another—I think
I know you too well to believe you would
for a single moment endure the thought
of such a union. And therefore it is extremely
doubtful whether I return at all to
Vermont. I have luckily found a man
here who has taken my land contract in
the settlement off my hands. Do not
think I shall ever entertain any other feelings
towards you than those of sincere
friendship and the highest respect.
William Ashley.'
During the perusal of the first part of
this unloverlike epistle, the countenance
of May exhibited a surprised and disappointed
expression, produced seemingly
by the formal and unaccustomed introductory
address, as well as not meeting
with anything she expected to find. But
this expression, as she continued, soon
changed into a look of blank bewilderment,
like that of one utterly at loss to
comprehend the meaning of the writer;
and it was not till she reached the
-- 075 --
[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]
concluding line that the painful truth, which
the writer, with apparent reluctance,
seemed impelled by a sense of duty, to
communicate, flashed for the first time
across her mind—then it was that the ashy
paleness of dismay spread over the quivering
muscles of her face; and with a hurried
mechanical kind of motion she again
commenced reading, trembling more and
more violently as she proceeded, till her
agitation becoming too great to continue
the perusal, she dropped the fatal paper
on the table, and, lifting up her hands
with a look of utter hopelessness and misery
indistinetly murmered, `Oh! may not
this be some dreadful dream from which
I shall awake?' And she pressed her
hand hard upon the swelling veins of her
forehead, as if to recover her consciousness.
`No, no,' she at length more audibly
uttered in a tone of despairing grief,—
`no, no! wretched, O wretched, lost,
wrecked and ruined! and all but Heaven
has now deserted me.' Tears now
-- 076 --
[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]
gushed and fell in a shower from her eyes,
and, covering her face with both hands,
heart-rending sobs alone gave further utterance
to the agony of feeling with which
her burt ing bosom was laboring.
At this moment Martin followed by Gow,
entered the room.
`Why! what is all this now?' exclaimed
the former, in affected surprise; `What
is the matter?—what can have happened
May?—O, something in the letter—but do
let us see what dreadful news it contains.'
So saying, he officiously bustled up to the
table, where May was sitting in the posture
above described with the letter open before
her, without moving, or offering any
resistance to Martin's taking it, and seemed
busily to run over the contents. `There!'
he presently exclaimed, turning to his
friend—`There! this is just what I always
expected—that fellow, Ashley, has cast
May aside for an old sweetheart, and has
had the impudence here to tell her so—
though it is scarcely three weeks since he
-- 077 --
[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]
was vowing and cooing round her like all
the world.—The false-hearted scoundrel!
But May had fair warning how the fellow
would treat her; and now I hope she will
put a proper value on the offer s of those
who really love her, and are worth a thousand
such fellows to-boot.'
`Yes, May,' said Gow in a low soothing
tone as he approached and leaned over the
table by her side, while Martin, under pretence
of further examining the letter,
moved off to an opposite window; `Yes,
May, now this great obstacle to your marrying
another is entirely removed, I hope
you will no longer refuse to hear my offer.
`O, do not torment me,' she replied in
broken utterance, her face still buried in
her hands; `O, leave me alone I beseech
you.'
`May!' interrupted Martin sternly, remember
your promise—you recollect—if
Ashley deserted you! Have you forgotten
it so soon?
The wretched girl groaned aloud,
-- 078 --
[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]
`You are silent?' continued her interrogator,
`and well you may be; for you
will hardly deny the solemn promise you
made me not a week since; and now I
call on you to fulfil it—do you consent?'
`O have mercy—some mercy,' she
cried, rising and moving towards the door,
`some mercy, on a poor broken hearted
girl!'
`Do you consent, I say again,' sternly
demanded Martin rising and endeavoring
to intercept her retreat.
`Do what you will with me—sell me
for a slave—kill me if you please, but let
me go now—O do let me go!' was the
beseeching reply, as with streaming eyes
and convulsive sobs she escaped from her
inquisitors, and fled to her own apartment.
`Let her go, Martin,' said Gow, hastily,
as the other was about to follow or command
her back, `let her go—let the matter
rest just where it is.—Silence gives
consent of itself—besides have you not
her express leave to do with her just as
-- 079 --
[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]
you please? What more do you want?'
`Why true, Gow, replied the other, hesitating
under the twinges of some remains
of conscience, which still lingered in spite
of all the trainings it had lately received-
`true, she all but consented—and did consent
in a sort—but—but you see she is no
more willing now than before—and how
would you manage it?'
`Manage it! why, there is nothing to
do but go a-head—you saddle your horse,
and go directly to the parson; tell him to
publish the bans next Sunday, and be on
hand to tie the knot on some day you and
your wife shall fix on, as soon as your
laws will allow; for I mean to go by Gunter
in this business.'
`Yes, but—'
`But what?—You are thinking about
raising the hundred dollars I conclude, or
you would not hesitate to go on, your
chance is so much better than ever to save
it—I tell you, man, one thing or the other
must be done soon.'
-- 080 --
[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]
The last hint was sufficient for a man
of the disposition of Martin, and he at
once forgot his qualms of conscience, and
tamely promised obedience to the commands
of the other.
`Well, then,' said Gow, `go on as I told
you, the game is now within certain reach,
if all is kept still.—We will let the girl
alone pretty much till the day arrives, and
in the mean while we will drive hard at
our business at the mountain; for I should
like amazingly to have a few of those jinglers
in my pocket for wedding music.'
`Amen to that,' said Martin, as he left
his friend for the business more immediately
before him.
`Dirty miscreant!' soliloquized Gow, after
his friend had left the room,—`what a
precious scoundrel, but for your pussillanimous
fears which only make you hesitate
here, or any where!—But with all your
duplicity and good will to play false with
me, I can keep the knave in you straight
by means of the miser and the coward.
-- 081 --
[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]
Rogue as I am, I despise you for your
meanness to this noble girl, whom you
should protect; and had I not a greater
object in view than you can have in this
affair, I would hang myself before I, who
have no such duties towards her, would
be guilty of even the part I am taking,
though a thousand times more decent than
yours. It will do me good to see you
punished, as you will be with a vengeance,
for this shuffling to me, and baseness to
her. Hah! you little think that while
you are helping me to a fortune with one
hand you are twisting a rope for your
own neck with the other.'
-- 082 --
CHAPTER VII.
[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]
We will now follow the eager-eyed
expectants of the glittering treasure to
the theatre of their secret operations in
the woods. A company of five individuals,
besides Martin and Gow, had already
been formed according to the plan
before mentioned, and many nights had
been spent by them in making excavations
on the spot indicated by their leader
who generally remained with them several
hours each night in directing their
movements, before he retired to his retreat
on the mountain, where he had
now for the most part taken up his quarters.
For the first few nights of their digging
he had directed their efforts to different
places within a circle of some ten
rods in diameter, designated by certain
marks on the trees, and constituting a
-- 083 --
[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]
boundary within which, he told them, he
had rendered it certain, by views obtained
in his magic stone, and the working of the
divining rods, that the money lay buried.
But for several of the last nights he had
ordered them to proceed on in excavating
in the same vein, assuring them that
they might depend on having centered on
the right place, and to so great a certainty
was this now reduced, as his stone and
often tried rods informed him, that he
could safely promise them that a few more
nights' labor would bring them to the treasure.
And such being the case, he called
on each man to have the bonus to be
paid him on reaching the first dollar, in
readiness, at the same time declined assisting
them any further till they severally
complied with this indispensable requisition.
This, for several days, caused a
suspension of their labors; for it required
no small exertions on the part of the company
generally, and many sacrifices on
the part of some of them to raise, at that
-- 084 --
[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]
day, the necessary sum. But their exertions
and sacrifices, great as they were in
some cases, were cheerfully, and even
anxiously made in the fancied certainty
of soon being a thousand fold repaid in
the glittering harvest which they were about
to reap. Farms were unhesitatingly
mortgaged to distant money-lenders, oxen
and horses, the only ones possessed by
their owners, were sold at reduced prices,
and all kinds of property were disposed
of, or pledged for a tithe of its value, to
meet the exigency. And so great was
their activity that before one week had
elapsed, every man of the company had
reported himself to his leader as prepared
with his hundred dollars in his pocket,
and eagerly demanded to be led again to
the work.
Hitherto the enterprise had been conducted
with so much caution and secrecy
that little was known in the neighborhood,
except by those immediately concerned,
of its existence, and much less of the
-- 085 --
[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]
object for which the company was formed.
But either by reason of the stir created
by raising the money, or because the
growing certainty of success had rendered
the different members of the association
less guarded, vague rumors were beginning
to be afloat in the neighborhood
that some uncommon adventure was going
on in the mountains; and many were
the conjectures and dark surmises made
concerning its character and object—the
secrecy with which it had been conducted
sufficing to throw an air of mystery
and romance over the proceeding. And
this had been considerably increased by
the appearance, about this time, of a singularly
accoutred old man, who had been
known to enter the settlement from the
north, and was several times afterwards
seen hovering round the outskirts of the
woods, back of which was the supposed
scene of these mysterious operations—
some believing him the devil himself come
to superintend the ceremonies of the black
-- 086 --
[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]
art which they suspected was in performance
in the woods, and others, more given
to matter of fact calculations, and disposed
to view secresy and mystery as generally
the cloak of iniquity, shrewdly suspecting
him to be an agent sent from
Stephen Burrough's Snag Factory in Canada,
to establish a branch in this unexposed
parts of the Green Mountains.[2] And
it was the impression of all indeed that
this strange personage had some connection
with the doings of the company;
those who were supposed to be its members
stoutly denied the truth of this supposition,
being probably, with the exception
of their leader, really as much in the
dark concerning the cause of the appearance
and the character of the old man as
their neighbors.
It was on a dark night in July, a few
days subsequent to the scene where we
left our heroine at Martin's that the
-- 087 --
[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]
money diggers resumed their labors. Excited
by the late assurances of Gow they
came, one, by one, stealing to the spot at
an early hour, and as usual, having kindled
a small fire, and stuck a pine knot torch
in a stump on the bank of the excavation
to furnish light for their operations, they
waited with nervous impatience the arrival
of their leader to direct the spot on which
their efforts were now to be bestowed.
The latter soon made his appearance; and
after giving his directions with the mysterious
gravity with which he had sustained
his part through the whole enterprise, and
seeing them fairly at work, he soon informed
them that, from the experiments he had
been making thro' the day, he had strong
hopes of reaching the treasure in the course
of a few hours, and that he should remain
with them till the close of their labors for
the night. This thrilling announcement
added fresh ardor to their exertions, and
wrought up their minds to the highest pitch
of expectation and excitement. And, in
-- 088 --
[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]
imagination, new farms were already purchased;
old ones richly stocked and improved;
new houses built and finished,
wives were rustling in their new silk
gowns; tables were groaning with dainties,
and hundreds were lavished with a
free hand in treats by embryo captains of
militia or justices of peace on the occasion
of their promotion, honors which their
great wealth would certainly bring to
them. Thus with lusty blows and many
a gleeful joke they delved on till about
midnight.
Gow now made another trial with his
rods; and after assaying them some time
from different points, with great seeming
carefulness and accuracy, he rose with a
satisfied air, and hastily throwing them
aside as things whose aid was now no
longer required, he joyfully announced to
his associates that the hour which was to
crown their labor with success was at last
arrived, but that it was the hour likewise
that would, very probably, put all their
-- 089 --
[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]
prudence and fortitude to the severest
trial; for he must now apprise them that
in those cases where any murder or other
great wickedness had been committed in
connexion with secreting a treasure, there
was generally considerable difficulty in
securing it, even after it was fairly discovered,
owing to the strange sights and
noises which were seen and heard about
the time of reaching and attempting to
seize it. But these sounds or apparitions,
as startling and terrible as they might
seem, would hurt nobody, nor prevent securing
the money, if no attention was
paid to them; while if the attention at
that critical moment was suffered to be diverted,
and the eye withdrawn from the
spot, the money some how or other was
almost sure to get away, or be so lost sight
of, that it could not be found again without
a new course of digging and experiment.
This to be sure, might not be a
case where any such difficulty would occur,
but it is always best to be prepared
-- 090 --
[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]
for the worst; and therefore, the instant
it was announced that the money was
reached every man must have all his senses
about him, and confine them to the
spot; and on no account look off or suffer
a glance, or thought, to stray to what
might be doing around him, but grapple
at the treasure as soon as it was laid open,
in whatever shape it be found, and hang
on for life, though the very devil might be
yelling about his ears. With this startling
caution he ordered the men to dig away
the inequalities of the bottom, and level
off a broad space where they had last been
digging. With nerves agitated by fear and
expectation they hurriedly went to work,
and soon smoothed down a space sufficiently
broad to meet the mind of their
leader. He then formed them in a circle
around him, and taking a heavy crow-bar,
and ordering every eye to be fixed intensely
on the spot where he should strike, and
if any signs of hitting the money followed,
to dig for their lives, he lifted high the
-- 091 --
[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]
heavy weapon and thrust it deep into the
ground. A sharp, grating sound, as of
the deadened clinking of metals under
ground, followed the blow. And a low,
eager, suppressed shout of exultation simultaneously
escaped from the lips of all
the company; while almost at the same
instant a deep unearthly groan issued from
the nearest thicket, striking the ear with
horrible distinctness, and causing every
heart to quake with apprehension. Gow
quickly repeated his blow, and it was again
followed by the same cheering sound
from the earth, and the same, and still
more startling groan from the thicket.
`Now dig!—dig for your very lives!'
sternly exclaimed Gow. Rallying their
sinking courage at the command, they fell
furiously to work, throwing the earth in
every direction by their vague and random
blows, and seemingly trying to stifle their
fears by the desperate energy of their efforts,
as nearer and more terrific grew the
fearful sounds around them. Still
-- 092 --
[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]
managing, however, to keep their eyes on the
work, though scarcely able to control the
movements of their shaking and quaking
limbs, they soon laid bare what they took
to be the iron chest containing their prize.
`The lid! the lid! seize and raise the
lid!' cried Gow, `and every eye upon the
spot!' So saying he seized a bar and
thrusting it under the supposed lid raised
one side of it several inches from its bed,
when the sight of rusty dollars beneath,
dimly glittering in the feeble light of their
torch, greeted their enraptured sight.—
`There! there it is!' shouted the men, `up
with the lid then, and seize it!' cried Gow.
One of them accordingly grappled with
the lid and had raised it nearly upright,
when in the act of stooping, involuntarily
casting a look through his arms back
on the bank behind them, he gave a shriek
of terror which turned all eyes to the spot
indicated by his wild gestures. On the
bank above them, at a few yards distant,
stood an apparition which made the blood
-- 093 --
[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]
curdle in their veins. The figure of an
old man, his head and arms bare, and his
long hair of milky whiteness streaming
down over his shoulders, one of his skeleton
arms thrown aloft, and the other
pointing to his bloody throat which seemed
to be cut from ear to ear; while from
his sunken sockets his eyes shone like two
burning coals, and from his mouth a blue
flame appeared to issue, showing long rows
of spikefashioned teeth glowing like red
hot iron. `Seize the money!' vociferated
Gow, at the same time plunging his hands
under the lid. Partially roused by the
words of their leader the appalled and
horror-struck men were making a confused
motion to follow his example, when
the apparition seizing their torch and
whirling it wide into the bushes, leaped
with a hideous screech directly upon them.
Tumbling one over another, in the darkness
and confusion, all but Gow sprang
wildly up the bank and fled from the spot
like frighted sheep from beneath the crash
-- 094 --
[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]
of a falling thunder bolt; some running
against trees which threw them back stunned
and nearly senseless on the ground by
the shock—some tumbling over logs and
there laying in breathless stilness, and
some fleeing and hiding themselves in distant
thickets till his infernal majesty, as
they verily believed him, should be pleased
to take his departure. All was now
dark and silent as the tomb. Gow however,
who had fearlessly remained on the
spot, either because he had more nerve
than his associates, or because he was better
acquainted with his majesty, soon found
his way to the decayed fire kept for lighting
their torches, and lighting up a fresh
knot proceeded to the spot from which
the company had been so strangely driven,
and put things in such a situation as
best comported with his purposes. After
which he began to call loudly to his men
to return, as the ghost or whatever it was
that had spoiled their game, was gone, and
there was no further danger he assured
-- 095 --
[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]
them of his appearing that night. One
by one the men came creeping cautiously
and stealthily from their hiding places;
and all at length were again assembled on
the bank of the excavation. When, after
being a little reassured by the words of
their leader and the presence of one another,
they all proceeded to the spot where
they had last seen the supposed chest; but
no appearance of either chest or money
remained, and a little loose earth gave the
only indication of the spot where they had
discovered it. `The game is all up for
to-night, as I supposed,' observed Gow,
after thrusting down a stick a few times.
`The game is up for this time, and now
you see what you have lost by not attending
to my cautions, and keeping better
command of yourselves, when it was all
nothing but an empty apparition-the mere
shadow of some old codger that has been
dead and rotten these hundred years, and
that could have neither hurt or been felt
by any body.'
-- 096 --
[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]
`Don't know zackly about that, Captain,
' interrupted one—`he grabbed my leg
as I was springing up the bank there, I'll
swear to ye, and if I had'nt kicked him
off he'd a carried me under where the
chist is, fur zino.'
`Yes, and he chased me like thunder
way out there in the woods,' said another,
his teeth still chattering from fright,
`and gave me a lick over the head that
knocked me down stiff as a tom cod, and
here's the marks on't now,' he continued,
rubbing and showing his forehead which
had been barked by running against a tree.
`He came from a brimstone country
anyhow; for I smelt it as plain as day—
and seems to me I can smell it now,'
observed a third, snuffing and turning his
nose round in different directions.
`How like a painter he bellowed and
screeched it, jest as he jumped!' exclaimed
a fourth; `I vow, it made my hair stand
up so stiff it shoved my hat off!'
`And what eyes!' added a fifth, `my
-- 097 --
[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]
stars, how they glared! if that are thing
wasn't the devil, no matter!'
`Pshaw! pshaw!' said Gow, `all nonsense,
I assure you—this is all nothing
to what I have met with at such times;
and you yourselves will be convinced of
it by the time we have had another such—
but now let us see how much we did
get.'
They then, taking a smooth place
without the excavation, proceeded to
produce and count the few dollars they
had seized when driven from their hold
on the treasure.—Gow and Martin, it
appeared, were the only ones who were
successfull in fairly getting hold of any,
each of whom had grasped and retained
a single handful of bona fide dollars,
amounting to thirty in number; of this
there could be no mistake; for they
were spread before them, and, though a
little rusty, as might be expected, were
yet, to all appearance, genuine Spanish
coin; furnishing indubitable evidence to
-- 098 --
[figure description] Page 098.[end figure description]
those who might have hitherto entertained
doubts of the existence of the treasure,
that money was here, and with
proper management, might be secured.—
And this cheering thought with the assurances
of their leader, that there would
be no difficulty in again finding the chest
with one or two night's digging; and that
these disturbances to frighten them away
were comparatively light after the first
ordeal, raised their spirits almost to their
former level, and, as they sat in a ring
round the fire with an occasional glance
of wildness, and sometimes convulsive
start, the lingering effects of their recent
fright, eagerly handling and eyeing the
dollars like scared children who had been
appeased with toys, they began once
more to crack their jokes over their
strange adventure, and again grow rich in
the prospects of another trial for the
slippery treasure.
Taking advantage of this state of feling,
and the renewed expectations which he
-- 099 --
[figure description] Page 099.[end figure description]
had succeeded in raising in their minds,
Gow now told them, as the treasure had
been discovered and the first dollar found,
the contingency had therefore happened
which entitled him to a hundred dollars
from each; and gave them to understand
that he expected their immediate compliance
with their bargain. To this after
some demurring, and a few manifestations
of reluctance, they finally assented, and
producing their money, they, with the
exception of Martin, paid him on the
spot. And this business being adjusted
and an arrangement made to commence
operations again as soon as the situation
of the treasure could be ascertained by
experiments, the band separated for the
night—the men to dream of devils and
pots of money, and their artful leader to
hug the reality of five hundred dollars.
eaf388.n2[2] The counterfeit bills by which the celebrated Stephen
Burroughs once flooded the country, were at that
day usually denominated snags.
-- 100 --
CHAPTER VIII.
[figure description] Page 100.[end figure description]
Let us now return to the disconsolate
girl whom we left sinking under the accumulated
load of distress, occasioned by
the supposed desertion of one lover,
in whom she had centered her every
hope of happiness, and whose image
she had enwrapped in her very heart's
core, and the fresh and deeply abetted
persecutions of another, the object of
her rooted dislike and suspicion, whose
presence even was painful and perplexing
to her feelings. After the interview
at which May received the letter so astounding
to her hopes and long cherished
affections, Martin carried into immediate
effect the preliminaries of marriage
recommended and urged by his bold and
determined associate. And the banns
were accordingly published the next
Sunday at the village, and the
-- 101 --
[figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]
attendance of the minister bespoken to celebrate
the nuptials one week from the
Tuesday evening next succeeding the
publishment. May, in the mean time,
the person above all others the most intersted
in this movement, had never
been in the least consulted, but kept in
entire ignorance of its existence; and
never dreaming that any immediate advantage
would be taken of a promise
made on condition of a desertion which,
in her unbounded confidence, she believed
could never happen, and which, as she
now suspected was artfully exacted by
Martin with a knowledge previously received,
from some sourceor other, of Ashley's
defection—or that any thing would
be tortured into a consent which she
subsequently uttered in her grief and agitation
at the intelligence by which that
confidence, as well as all her happiness
was swept away at a blow, and wholly
unsuspecting, indeed of the measures
which had been taken, and which had
-- 102 --
[figure description] Page 102.[end figure description]
made such fearful progress towards disposing
of her to one she so thoroughly
detested, she continued several days drooping
in listless apathy to all that was
passing around her, brooding over her
griefs with feelings of anguish to be imagined
only by those whose sensibilities
have received a similar shock, or looking
forward to the chill and dreary future,
there to find no ray of consolation to
compensate for the settled and heart
blighting woe of the present. And it was
not till two or three days after the event
that she accidentally overheard, in a
conversation between her mother and a
neighbour who had called at the door,
that the intention of marriage between
herself and Gow had been publicly proclaimed
the preceding Sunday, and that
not a week intervened before the fatal
day fixed on for its consummation.—The
poor girl, as well she might be, was petrified
with astonishment, and filled with
mingled emotions of dread and
-- 103 --
[figure description] Page 103.[end figure description]
indignation at the discovery. As great, however,
as was her dismay at the dreaded fate
which she saw preparing for her, as deep
as was her indignation at the effrontery
of Gow, and the baseness of those who
had sanctioned his conduct, she made no
outcry—uttered no word of alarm or reproach—
questioned no one—called no
one to her council, or even hinted that
she was apprised of what was in progress;
for where should she go for succor or
advice? The friend and more than
friend, on whom she had all along relied
to return soon enough to relieve her from
her troubles before any measure of actual
compulsion should be used, had now
cruelly deserted, and left her unsupported
in heart, and friendless and unprotected
in her extremities—the neighbors,
if the delicacy of her feelings would permit
her to apply to them, were indifferent
or against her, or at best would have
no power to relieve her—and her parents
who should be her friendly advisers and
-- 104 --
[figure description] Page 104.[end figure description]
protectors, she well knew, were, instead,
the abettors, if not the prime movers of
all that had been done. She saw at a
glance how she had been entrapped—
how the advantage she had unwittingly
given them had been siezed on as a pretended
excuse for the steps they had taken;
and she could easily foresee that
this would furnish them with the same
plea, as false, hypocritical and base, as
their consciences must tell them it was,
for forcing her on till she was irretrievably
bound in by their toils. And although
she knew not half the extent of
their baseness and treachery, she yet
knew enough to fill her with dread for
the result of their machinations, and
cause her nearly to despair of being able
to extricate herself from the snares by
which they had beset her. And yet she,
at times, looked on the fate that now
seemed rapidly approaching, dreaded as
it had been, and still was, to her sober
reflection, with an indifference and
-- 105 --
[figure description] Page 105.[end figure description]
apathy of feeling, which one week before
would have astonished even himself.—
There was a strange wayward feeling
that occasionally came mingling in the
purturbed tumult of her mind, and, seemed
half to court the very fate she would
avoid. Why should she care now, it
said, what become of her?—life was now
forever a blank to her, and no happiness
was to be saved by avoiding her doom.
And offended pride then resentfully threw
in her plea, `He might have saved all this—
he has cruelly deserted me in the hour
of need, and that desertion, besides withering
my heart to its core, has thrown
me into the snares of a villain. How the
thought, when he hears of my fate, will
sharpen the strings of conscience that
must goad him for his conduct. But
what will he care, she said, her better
feelings again predominating, what will
he care now for the wreched, wretched
girl? and her tears streamed afresh at the
sickening answer her mind despairingly
-- 106 --
[figure description] Page 106.[end figure description]
responded. `Destroy thyself,' whispered
the tempter. Starting at the obtruding
thought, she fell upon her knees, and
poured out her heart to her God, besought
him to banish these dreadful feelings
from her bosom, and implored his
divine assistance in snatching her from
the threatening peril, and restoring her
to tranquility. She arose, meek and
calmed from the devotion, and took her
bible, there to find some balm for her
bruised spirit. She opened upon a paper
on which she recollected some time
before to have penned a sentiment and
left it unfinished while hesitating in the
choice of a word. Her attention immediately
became rivited to the writing.
The words were repeated below on the
same paper, and in her own hand apparently
with the lacking word supplied.—
When could I have done this? she asked
herself in surprise.—And that word
too, which I could not recall—that is
here—it cannot be, and yet it is my own
-- 107 --
[figure description] Page 107.[end figure description]
hand. She cast her eye still further
down, where she had written her name,
May Martin. This also she remembered
to have done once; but here it was
repeated a dozen times, and last of all
was written May Gow. I never coupled
those two names together! she exclaimed,
starting up, while a flash of light
broke in on her mind that made her clap
her hands for joy. The bible had, till
within a day or two, lain in the window
in a room where Gow had often been
alone—pen and ink were always there—
he must have done it, and for the purpose
of learning to counterfeit her hand,—
and how well he has succeeded! But
if he could do this, why not have also
written the letter she had received purporting
to be from Ashley—he did, he
did! As this rapid process ran through
her mind to the conclusion, she flew to
the pretended letter from Ashley—compared
all the little particularities of the
hand to the writing just discovered and
-- 108 --
[figure description] Page 108.[end figure description]
doubted no longer. It is, it is so! He
did write me—Martin gave the villain
the letter, and he kept it, and by it counterfeited
the hand in the letter they gave
me! Oh! a mountain is off my heart!
Ashley, my dear Ashley, is still faithful!
Oh, how could I ever have doubted him!—
But I will now live—now save myself
for him—in spite of them all I will do it,
and hesitate no longer about exposing
this wretch, and bringing him to punishment.
Such were the exclamations of
May as she paced the room in a delirium
of joy. It was her first thought to write
immediately to her lover, and she had
siezed a sheet for the purpose, but a
second thought suggested that the real
letter might, after all, have contained
something similar to what she had received,
or at last something, which, if
she had it, would materially vary what
she was about to write, and that she
had better defer her purpose till she
thought over the possibilities of obtaining
-- 109 --
[figure description] Page 109.[end figure description]
it. She reasoned that the letter was still
in existence, as Gow would keep it,
thinking he might have occasion to counterfeit
the hand again in the prosecution
of his designs—that he probably would
not carry it about his person, for fear of
loosing or accidentally exposing it, and
that it was doubtless now in his cabin in
the woods and most likely left unconcealed,
as she had gathered from various
intimations that he stayed there alone,
and that no one ever presumed to approach
his retreat. And having already
pretty well ascertained that the employment
of Gow and his associates in the
woods was that of digging money or precious
ores, which she supposed he had
persuaded them to believe could be found
there, and knowing that he must necessarily
be absent from his cabin whenever
they were engaged in digging, which, from
Martin's going and return, she had learned
was the first part of the night, she, not
thinking of any one whom she could
-- 110 --
[figure description] Page 110.[end figure description]
employ for the purpose, conceived the bold
project of going herself into the mountain
by night, after the family had retired,
and attempting to get possession of
the letter. But how should she ascertain
where this cabin or shantee was situated?
In her younger years, she had
often and with delight, rambled through
the woods with her mates in search of
nuts, or medicinal roots and herbs for
the yearly supply of the family. She
knew well the whole tract of forest back
to the mountains, and even a portion of
them she had occasionally ascended;
but how was this to enable her to find in
the night a place, which was not known
even to the associates of the man, who,
from no creditable motives, she suspected,
had thus carefully concealed his retreat?
She knew not; but her discovery
had given a new impulse to her life,
rousing every thought and energy of her
soul into action, and so far from yielding
to the obstacle, her mind became busied
in expedients to overcome it.
-- 111 --
[figure description] Page 111.[end figure description]
There was in the neighborhood a boy
of about fifteen years of age, known by
the appellation of shrewd David, the prefix
of which was gained him by his uncommon
sagacity and keenness of observation
of all that was passing around
him. Being the son of a poor widow by
the name of Butler, who supporting herself
by her loom and needle, and having
no business for the boy except to take
care of her cow and procure her wood,
had left him mostly to shift for himself,
and, although bred in ignorance, yet for
doing an errand, riding for the doctor in
cases of great emergency, or going as an
express on affairs requiring secrecy and
prudence, he had acquired a character
for great despatch, skill and fidelity; and
as for finding a sheep or kine strayed and
lost in the woods, or the more daring
feats of seeking out the retreat of a mischievous
bear or wolf, none were equal
to shrewd David; for naturally intrepid,
nimble and active as the squirrel which
-- 112 --
[figure description] Page 112.[end figure description]
he delighted to follow to the tops of the
highest trees, and crafty in expedients as
the doubling fox, which, with the keenness
of the grey-hound's sight and almost
the fleetness, he often drove to the long
eluded burrough; there was scarcely a
rood of mountain or moorland in the settlement
with which he was not familiar.
Among others he had several times been
employed by Ashley as an assistant in
his surveys in the woods, and May had
often heard her lover speak in the highest
terms of the capacity and honesty of
the hardy little woodsman.
As our heroine sat by her window facing
the garden at the back of the house,
her mind absorbed in devising means for
accomplishing the object on which we
left her pondering, her eye caught the
form of the boy just described, sitting on
a rock and fishing for trout in a brook
which ran by the house just without the
enclosure of the garden, and the thought
instantly occurred to her that he would
-- 113 --
[figure description] Page 113.[end figure description]
be a useful and trusty assistant in effecting
the object she had in view. Full of
this idea she immediately repaired to the
fence opposite, and within a few feet of
where the boy was sitting.
`Come trout,' he was saying to himself,
as he sat so deeply engrossed in his
tantalizing employment as not to have
heeded the noiseless approach of his visitor,
`Come, come, trouty, I gives you a
fair invite to be at my breakfast tomorrow
morning; and I knows you are aching
to snap at that worm, as bad as I am
to have you; so out from under the rock
with you in a jiffin. Well, now, blast
your scary picture, I guesses I can wait
as long as you can, any how.'
`What luck to day, David?' at length
asked May, hesitating to interrupt him in
his soliloquy.
`Why!' exclaimed the boy, rapidly
throwing the glances of his keen gray
eyes about him till they settled on his
fair interrogator. `Why, Miss May! dog
-- 114 --
[figure description] Page 114.[end figure description]
my cat, but you half scares me! What
luck? O, not much—the flies are getting
so thick that the fishes begin to think
they can get their dinners at a cheaper
rate than I offers them.'
`But you like the employment, don't
you, David?'
`O yes, when they aint so dainty about
their victuals—but rather dull music
now—I loves better to be scrambling over
the mountains with Mr Ashley. When
will he come back?—but they say he aint
a comin back ever.'
`I am sure—I expect—that is, I hope
he will return, David,' replied May, blushing
and hesitating at being brought so
very abruptly to the very subject she had
at heart.
`Why, mother says he sent a letter
about marrying another girl; and they
all say you are going to marry that Mister
Gow, that folks think is such a wonderful
man, and was published last Sunday.
'
-- 115 --
[figure description] Page 115.[end figure description]
`I have just heard that I was published.
'
`Just heard!—now that's a good one,
Miss May.'
`David!'
`What?'
`Could I trust you with a secret?'
`What secret?'
`Why, if I wished to engage your assistance
in some affair that I had reasons
for keeping secret, would you try to oblige
me, and keep it to yourself?'
`I mought, and then I mought not
again,' replied the boy, with a droll,
shrewd, half serious and half joking expression.
`I jumps at the chance a
month agone; but the fact is, Miss May,
when I hears you are going to have that
Mister Gow, I don't like you so well as
I wants to.'
`Well, David, I don't blame you for
it; but if that is all you dislike in me, we
can be friends again at once; for I can
assure you I will never marry Gow, if
there is any way to prevent it.'
-- 116 --
[figure description] Page 116.[end figure description]
`Good now!' exclaimed he, jumping
up with animation and throwing down
his fish pole hard upon the rock,—`there!
see that pesky trout whipping off!' he
continued, in an under tone, pointing into
the brook.
`But why, David, should you care about
my marrying Gow?'
`Because I hates him. You see I
likes to know what's going on, and goes
one day to the mountain and finds where
they digs a nights for money. Well,
while I looks about there, guessing it all
out, down comes that mister with a switch
in one hand behind him, and afore I
thinks anything's to pay, gives me two
or three tough ones right over my head,
and says, now keep off you little himp or
I cuts you into mince meat. But David
Butler is not made of wood—he remembers
and thinks. So I watches every
thing, and soon makes up my mind that
he's a black one, trying to tom fool the
folks and get away their money—for I
-- 117 --
[figure description] Page 117.[end figure description]
finds they've been round borrowing money,
and what for is it? they don't want
it to make their potatoes grow, I guesses.
And what for is it too, that he wants to
be alone there in the mountains, where
nobody must see his place?'
`True, true, David, shrewd they rightly
call you—I too have suspected nearly
all this, and still know something besides
of the fellow. And now will you keep
my secret and engage for me?—it is this
same villain that I want you to assist me
in defeating. Will you promise?'
`Yes, Miss May, I promises now, and
what I says I does.'
`Well, David, I have discovered, as I
think, that the letter you heard of was
made up by Gow to deceive me and make
me listen to his offers.'
`Zounds! I'd fix him. And Mr Ashley
didn't write any letter?'
`Yes, I am satisfied he did, for Gow
could have had no other means of counterfeiting
Mr Ashley's hand. Mr Martin
-- 118 --
[figure description] Page 118.[end figure description]
took the letter from the office and gave
it to Gow, who, I feel very sure, has still
got it, and keeps it laid away in his place
in the mountain. Do you know, David,
where this is?'
`I guesses pretty close at it. I thinks
it is the old cave that Mr. Ashley and I
once finds in coming over the mountain.
I sees, almost every night just after dark,
a little glim of light away up there, just
peeping through the trees.'
`Is there such a place?—that is doubtless
it then. Now, David, can you go
and get me the letter?'
`What! in the day time?—he's always
there, and won't let me have it.'
`No, in the night, when he is away
with the diggers.'
`Maybe the old man's there—they do
say, Miss May, he's the old one himself,
helping them dig money with the black
art. I'd go for you and take a bear out
of a trap, if 'twas as dark as a nigger's
pocket, for I always knows how to fight
-- 119 --
[figure description] Page 119.[end figure description]
such like—but the old one!—I fears to
go alone cause of he.'
`But if I would go with you?' said May
smiling at his superstitious fears, but
thinking it would be useless to combat
them.
`You! you, Miss May!'
`Yes, David, I will go, and this very
night, as soon as mother's asleep—they
have not been digging for several nights
past, but I overheard Mr Martin say they
were going to begin again to night; and
Gow of course will be absent from his
cave. Will you come, go with me, and
guide me to the place?'
`I goes,' said the little fellow, plucking
up—`the old one never comes near if
you be there, Miss May, and I fears nothing
else.'
`Well, then, meet me at this spot to-night
as soon as you see the light put out
in mother's room; and though it is out
of my power to pay you now, David, I
will some day or other see you handsomely
rewarded.'
-- 120 --
[figure description] Page 120.[end figure description]
`I works for pay sometimes, cause
mother's poor—but I likes Mr Ashley,
and I likes you, now—and I goes just as
well for likes as money.'
So saying, and gathering himself up
proudly, the little fellow took his fishing
implements and hastily moved off, as if
his excited feelings were hurrying him
away to prepare for the expedition.
`Don't forget to be here to night in
season,' said May, calling after him.
`I never forgets any thing,' replied the
boy, increasing his pace.
Our heroine now returned to her domestic
avocations in a state of the highest
excitement, created by her newly
raised hopes and the thoughts of her projected
adventure, and impatiently awaited
the time set for undertaking it. It was
her first object to obtain her letter; but
although her great anxiety for its possession
had prompted to this bold, and, to a
female situated as she was, somewhat
hazardous enterprize, she yet had other
-- 121 --
[figure description] Page 121.[end figure description]
inducements to visit the cavern. She
highly suspected Gow of deep and complicated
villainy, and thought it not improbable
that something might there be
discovered which would enable her to
unmask him; for if any of his deeds had
rendered him obnoxious to punishment,
she, in view of justice and public good,
as well as her own wrongs and her own
safety, was fully determined to expose
him by every means in her power, believing
this was now not only due from
her, but the surest and perhaps the only
way she could escape from the dreaded
fate which seemed so menacingly impending
over her unprotected head.
-- 122 --
CHAPTER IX.
[figure description] Page 122.[end figure description]
At the appointed hour, May repaired
to the spot a greed on in the garden, and
found her sturdy little guide already
there patiently awaiting her arrival.
`Ah, ha! Miss May,' said David, cautiously
peering about—`up to the chalk
after all! that's a brave one for a lady—
I guesses all the afternoon as how you'd
flummux when it come dark.'
`Not so easily frightened, David. Are
you ready?—lead on then.'
On this, they silently set forward across
the fields and soon reached the
woods. Before entering them, however,
the boy, proposing a halt, mounted several
tall stumps successively for obtaining
an observation, and having at last succeeded,
he returned to the side of his
companion and observed—
`I sees a little twinkle up there once
in a while—there! I sees it from here
-- 123 --
[figure description] Page 123.[end figure description]
now—here, look where I points—do you
see it now?'
`Ah, yes, I did catch it then.'
`Well, that's the place—about half a
mile off—I knows a good cow path to
the mountain—but when we gets there, I
knows but one way to the cave—nation
bad and steep too, Miss May, but I finds
the way for all the dark—and here, feel
the end of this cord—I brings it for you
to hang on to, so you don't get lost in the
bushes. And now, Miss May, if you
aint afeard, I leads you to the spot—I
guesses that Mister has come down among
the diggers by this time, for I
watches and sees them going afore I
comes for you—so now if the old man
isn't there we finds a clear run and no
snakes.'
`David,' said May, not knowing how
far the boy's hobgoblin fears might carry
him, in case they met any one, and
being aware how much depended on him
in the adventure, `you have very wrong
-- 124 --
[figure description] Page 124.[end figure description]
notions about this old man, who has been
seen about here—he is either some poor
crazy vagabond, or else a brother rogue
of Gow; but at all events nothing more
than a man.'
`O, I fears nothing for him; cause if
he be the old one, when he sees you,
Miss May, he clears out in a hurry.'
The boy now plunged into the woods,
followed by his daring companion, and
striking into the path, proceeded slowly
and cautiously on to the foot of the mountains
at some little distance from where
the money diggers were assembling for
their night operations.
It was the same night which we have
already described as proving so exciting
and fearful to these enthusiasts in searching
for the buried mammon, we having
found it most convenient, in describing
their operations, to go forward of the
events of the other part of our narrative.
The night was unusually dark, and the
thick mass of the full grown foliage of the
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heavy overhanging forest completely shutting
out the faint suffusions of the skylight,
which was scarcely perceptible even
in the open field, and adding a still deeper
shade to the ordinary darkness, no
common or unaccustomed hand could
have suceeded in advancing in the woods
at all, much less in reaching any given
point at a distance; but shrewd David,
familiar with every peculiar tree, every
turn of the path, and every inequality of
the ground, and possessed of a vision uncommonly
acute, carrying a long stick in
his hand to apprise him of each interposing
obstacle, while his bare feet informing
him by the feel of the first step's deviation
from the slightly trod path, threaded
the difficult way with surprising accuracy,
finding but little trouble for himself,
and kindly endeavoring, by removing
every limb or bush from the way
and timely notifying her of every log or
other obstacle to be surmounted, to aid
his less practised companion in her more
embarrassed progress.
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Sometimes the resolution of May for a
moment wavered, and heart almost misgave
her at the boldness of her own undertaking
and the difficulties of its accomplishment;
but a sense of her own
wrongs, as often occurring to rouse her
bosom to resistance, and the thoughts of
what must soon be her fate without a perseverance
in her plans, impelling her onward
to action, bore up her courage
through all, and tempered her usually
mild spirit with an energy adequate to the
trying emergency.
They at length arrived at the foot of
the here steeply ascending mountain.—
David now again came to a halt for the
purpose of ascertaining his bearings, and
finding the most feasible place for climbing
the ascent. After groping about
awhile, he returned, and, informing May
that he had succeeded in finding the place
where he intended to go up, he led her
to the spot.
`Now, Miss May,' he said in a low,
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cautious tone, `now for the tougher! I
listens and just hears the diggers at their
work—not a great ways off from here
they are now—that mister, I guesses, has
come down afore this; but if he aint,
and we meets him, I hears him coming
time enough, and when I gives three
jerks of the cord, you must slink under
a bush or something, and lie still as a
mouse, and I does the same till he gets
by. So now lets pull for it.'
`Bless me!' said May, just being able
to discern the dark outline of the steep
which rose like the side of a house before
her. `Bless me, David, we havn't
got to climb up here?'
`Yes, no other way for it—but never
mind, we goes it—and I tells you what,
Miss May, you tie the end of the cord
round you, like I've done—there! now
let them white hands work for their living—
I seizes at the roots and bushes
along up, and if you pulls me back, you
must be stronger than that pesky old
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bear that grappled hold of my trowsers
last summer, just as I springs and scrambles
up a sapling to get out of the way
of her.'
With this they commenced their laborious
and difficult task of climbing the
mountain.
Slowly clambering from tree to tree
and rock to rock, our sturdy and active
little mountaineer, followed by his scarcely
less agile and resolute companion, continued
to work his way several hundred
feet up the almost perpendicular ascent,
till they came to a narrow level, beyond
which an upright and wall-like ledge interposed
an insurmountable obstacle to
their proceeding any further in the direction
they had been pursuing.
`Ah! I remembers this cute place,'
whispered David, as they both dropped
down on a mossy rock, on reaching the
summit, through sheer exhaustion from
the severity of their struggles. `I remember
this—we are most there now—
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only go along a piece on this level till we
comes to the end, and then when we
mounts another rock and just gets round
a point of a ledge, there's the cave—no
trouble but we finds it, cause see! there's
more light, now we've got above the tops
of the trees, down there below.'
Our adventurers again set forward
along the scanty shelf towards the north,
keeping as near to the ledgy barrier on
the left as possible, as on the right, and
often within a yard of their feet, yawned
the black and fearful chasm of the precipice,
here falling down perpendicularly
some hundred feet beneath them.—
They soon, however, and safely reached
the termination of their walk in this direction.
For at this place, while the
shelf along which, for nearly a hundred
yards, they had now passed, considerably
widened, a tall rock shot out boldly from
the ledge on the left, forming a rectangular
arena of several square rods of level
surface, in the corner of which stood
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a small tree whose branches overtopped
the ledge above, here not more than ten
feet in height.
`There! Miss May,' said the little
guide, `when we gets up a top of this
we are within a few rods of the place
where the mister stays, as I now feels
sure, cause I finds the twigs and bushes
broke off along back there where he
brushes by in going and coming, and I
knows well enough nobody else comes
to this mortal place.'
`Yes, David, but how are we ever to
get up there?'
`Why I supposed all the time that he'd
a fixed up some contrivance to get up
and down, but I sees none. When Mr.
Ashley and I come down we gets up into
the top of that tree; but you can't
climb, can you Miss May?'
`I never tried it, David, I believe, or
at least not lately; but is there no other
way?'
`Stay a bit—let's see a little,' replied
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the boy. So saying and passing along
the base of the ledge, he soon announced
that he saw something projecting over
the top of the rock which he thought to
be some kind of a ladder. And now
nimbly mounting the tree and jumping
on to the rock, he proceeded to let down
the contrivance he had discovered, which
proved to be a light ladder, composed of
two poles distended at the ends by split
sticks, with strong bark ropes confined at
proper intervals to the sides to serve in
lieu of rounds. Our heroine courageously
mounted, and soon stood at the side
of her companion on the top of the rock.
Here they found another level, terminating
at the distance of two or three rods
in another and still loftier ledge of rocks.
After pulling up and carefully adjusting
the ladder in its original position, David
proposed, as from finding the ladder at
the top, Gow might still be in the cave,
to leave May under a projecting cliff, and
go round the point of the ledge which
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only intervened between them and the
cave, for the purpose of reconnoitering
the spot. Accordingly he noiselessly sunk
away, and after a short absence, he returned,
and creeping close up to May, he
put his mouth to her ear and whispered—
`Sure as guns, Miss May, they be there
yet!'
`They!' repeated the other with some
agitation, `they! who? are there two of
them?'
`Yes, the mister, and another oldish
man, who I almost thinks must be the old
man himself; though for certain he aint
got the same awful queer face on now
that he had when I gets a peep at him
one day in the edge of the woods.—
They've built out a sort of place with
stakes and bark right afore the cave, so
as to make it come all in one room; so
I creeps up behind, and gets a look at
'em through the holes.'
`Ah, ha!' mused May, `this old man
then wears a disguise—he is beyond all
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doubt an associate of Gow. But what is
to be done now, David?'
`Why, I thinks we better creep round
where I did, so as to be on the back side,
cause I expects the mister, and may be
tother one, comes this way soon now, to
go down to the diggers; and if they takes
a light, they see us, but if we goes round
there, they won't go that way for anything,
I guesses; and if they do, we can
slink off into the bushes, for there's a
clear run that way. So we better get
round there and wait till they goes, or we
give it up.'
May at once falling in with this advice,
our adventurers proceeded with the utmost
silence and caution round the projecting
point, and immediately found
themselves directly in front of, and not
twenty yards from the entrance of the
cavern. Voices were now distinctly heard
within, while a portion of light escaped
through the narrow entrance which was
stopped by setting a broad piece of bark
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upright on the inner side before it. With
a slight shudder May obeyed the motions
of her guide, and they passed on, keeping
as great a distance from the cave as the
still continued precipice on the right would
safely permit, and soon reached a spot
where the offset of the ledge forming the
cave seemed to terminate, leaving an
opening of only a gentle rise up the
mountain. Here, safe from discovery,
they sat down to watch the movements
of the inmates of the cave, the new addition,
or front of which, was still in
plain sight.
`See that little streak of light through
the side there, Miss May? Well there's
where I gets my peep. Suppose now
you creeps up and tries it, and I comes
after you gets still.'
`Can I do it without danger of being
heard?'
`Yes, if you feels every place where
you puts your foot down, to see that
there's no dry brush or leaves to make a
noise.'
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Another moment and our heroine was
gliding silently to the spot—another, and
she was breathlessly seeing and hearing
all that was passing within. The two
worthies were seated on a rude bench
made of a cleft log, placed before a small
fire, built just without the entrance of the
natural cave, so as to afford the smoke a
chance to escape through the opening
left in the bark roof above.
`Let's see, today is Thursday,' observed
the elder, a man apparently about fifty,
the first to break silence after May's
arrival at her loop-hole. `Today is
Thursday—next Tuesday evening brings
your concern to a focus, hey?'
`Next Tuesday, my old boy, is the
day that gives me as smart a little jade of
a wife as ever handled broomstick—together
with all the appurtenances there-unto
belonging, as my old dad's parchment
used to run.'
`Ay, ay, the appurtenances after division,
remember!—As to wife she should
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[figure description] Page 136.[end figure description]
have been named last; she is but the incumbrance.
'
`Why, as for that, Col., she is really
so smooth a piece, that I think I can
stick to, and be quite husbandlike for a
year or so; and by that time I intend to
have all said appurtenances in the shape
of cash in my pocket. After which I
shall probably be ready for a little high
life by way of adventures again.'
`Having duly and impartially divided—
`What a suspicious devil you are, Col.!
Yes, yes, I am honest and honor bright
in this business, depend on't.'
`Really!—you well know how I can
help myself, if you don't walk straight,
my conscientious lad.'
`Come, none of your threatening—I
can do as much even at that as you can,
I am thinking. But as to this affair, I
freely say you will be well entitled to
share the plunder, let it be as much as it
may; for you first started the project
and gave me the chance. But how,
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Col., did you happen to find out that the
old man made such a will? You never
told me exactly I think.'
`Why, hearing that the old man was
confined, and all others there, who formerly
knew me, dead or removed, I ventured
to spend some months in town;
and remaining there till after the old fellow
popped off, when the subject of his
family and estate was a good deal talked
of, I happened one day to overhear a
lawyer who drew the will telling a friend
all the particulars. He said Frank had
written home a penitent letter informing
his father of his private marriage in the
days of his wild oats long before he went
abroad, and that though his wife died at
the birth of her first child, yet that child
probably was still living, having been left
with some family in the north part of
New Hampshire, and winding off by asking
the old man's forgiveness, and hoping
he would provide for his child, a
daughter, he was told. On which the
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old man forgot all his temper—threw the
old will, cutting Frank off, into the fire—
made a new one, giving him all his
property except these legacies, in case
the girl was alive. I afterwards went to
the Register's office myself, and, under
some pretence or other, got a peep at
the will and found it as I had heard. It
was then, knowing Frank would come
home from France as soon as he
heard of his father's death to take possession
of his estate, I hunted you up
and put you on this scheme so as to have
all done before his return.'
`And all shall be done, my precious
old match-maker; but my very good
friends the money diggers are by this
time on the ground below, and doubtless
impatient for my coming—I must be off.
Let's see, how many of your salt and
water rusty dollars did we bury there?'
`Just thirty, I believe.'
`Five apiece, hey? Zounds! how
the fellows will jump at the sight of 'em,
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if they are of domestic manufacture!—
that is, if my very worthy friend the devil,
here, don't frighten 'em out of their
senses.'
`Yes, but you had better have heard
to me, Gow, and put them off till the
night before or after you are married.—
The fools, I am afraid, will go and pass
some of their dollars; and then we stand
an even chance to get blown up before
you bring your affair to a point.'
`Blown up! how? We get five hundred
dollars of the real to night, and
as for what they dig up, we shall not pass
it, and who can know where it comes
from?'
`No, no, but they will some way or
other connect it with you; and if they
do suspect you, I tell you again, ten to
one it don't blow your marriage into
moonshine.'
`They won't pass it—our plan of secrecy
till they get fairly hold of the treasure,
will prevent that; at least till I
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secure my treasure, and the next day, under
pretence of a short journey, I am off
with my wife, you see; and you the same
night as soon as you find me fairly buckled,
I suppose. But I must go—have
you your disguise ready—the phosphorus
for the eyes and mouth of your mask?
Well, then, come on pretty soon—get a
good position in the bushes near, and
when I sing out—`There's the money—
seize it,'—then you—but you will know
how to manage.'
With this Gow, lighting a small pocket
lantern, with which both he and his
associates seemed provided, left the cabin,
and May, who sat trembling with apprehension
lest he should come round
the corner and discover her, soon, to her
great relief, heard him let down the ladder
and descend. David, after Gow's
departure, came crawling to the side of
his companion, and now shared with her
the crevice in observing the movements
of the remaining inmate of the place.—
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The old man, on being left alone, soon
sunk into a deep reverie, and sat so long
in his mute and motionless abstraction
that his silent and unsuspected observers
began to fear that he intended to remain,
or that he would fall asleep, and thus defeat
their purpose of searching the interior.
At last, however, rousing up and
shaking off his seeming lethargy, he arose,
went back into the cave, and brought out
the different articles of his disguise for
the part he was about to enact in the
farce below. He then, taking up and
fitting on a frightful looking mask, turned
round, protruding his long neck forward,
first on one side, then another, as if practising
attitudes and trying to hit on the
most hideous.
`Wheugh!—wheu—' went David, forcing
out his breath in a sort of half whistle,
and then suddenly checking himself,
and relapsing into silence.
The old man next took from a little
box and rubbed round the small outlets
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for the eyes and mouth what appeared
to be a whitish substance, but which, as
the shade occasionally fell on the face,
shone like fire. Then taking off his coat,
rolling his shirt sleeves up to his shoulders
and baring his neck, he drew
some bright red ochre several times from
ear to ear, giving his throat the appearance
of having been cut across in a long
bloody gash. After which he put on an
old sleeveless shirt, apparently besmeared
in spots with gore, and then surmounted
this dress with a white horse hair wig,
rising stiff and bristly on the top of the
head, like a tuft of porcupine quills, and
flowing down in long snaky ringlets over
his neck and shoulders below, making a
whole as grotesque and hideous as well
could be imagined. Having thus completed
his equipment, he lit his lamp, and
carefully raking up the fire, departed to
be ready for the performance with which
the reader has already been made acquainted.
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`O, lightning!' exclaimed David, as
soon as the receding footstep of the man
had died away on his ear, `the very dogskin
that I sees by the wood-side—I
knows him the minute he gits his queer
tother face on. Well, if I didn't think
all the time he must be the old one! But
now—wheugh! he's no more devil than
I be.'
`I fear he is, David, in wickedness.'
`O, he's as bad as the old one, maybe,—
but what thinks you he's going to do,
Miss May?'
`I have learned their whole plot. You
were right in your suspicions. These
deliberate villains are about to defraud
these men, whom they have duped with
the idea of finding a treasure, out of a
large sum of money, and are expecting
to get hold of it to night—I have also
heard some very strange things about myself,
I think it must be—which I may
sometime tell you. But now, David, let
us proceed to the business for which we
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came—what I have been listening to had
nearly driven it from my mind. If you
will watch at the point of rocks yonder,
to give me notice, should either of them
return, I will go in myself, and see what
can be found.'
The boy readily complying, May now
unhesitatingly entered the place just left
by the unsuspecting foes of her happiness,
who were little dreaming that while with
such confidence of success, they were
weaving the meshes of their toils for others,
the least suspected of their intended
victims, a poor unfriended girl, had already
fathomed their villainous designs,
and was rapidly preparing a mine soon
and fatally to explode beneath their feet.
On entering the cabin, May kindled a
bright fire and proceeded to the search.
Going at once into the interior of the
rock, she came to a rude shelf on which
were placed some articles of provision,
among which was a part of a loaf of
bread of her own baking, while beneath
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on the smooth stone floor, were ranged
a plate or two, a few knives and forks,
and the scanty utensils with which they
prepared their food. Pausing a moment
over these with womanly curiosity and
criticism, she passed on and soon came
across sundry tools, the use of which
she at first was at a loss to understand.
A few imperfectly formed dollars, however,
laying near and now catching her
eye, at once explained the mystery—they
were a die and other implements for
coining.
`Now,' said she exultingly, well aware
of the penalties of counterfeiting, `Now
at least, I have him in my power—but
that for a last resort.'
And she went on prying in vain into
every place and corner for the main object
of her search, till she had nearly
given up all hope of success. Turning
to take one look more, however, before
she went out the door, she espied a pocket
inkstand and the corner of some
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writing paper protruding from a small opening
or crevice in the rock over the fire,
which was not observable from other
parts of the room. She flew to the spot,
and by the aid of the bench placed slantingly
against the rock, made shift to
reach and draw out the loose paper,
among the leaves of which was a crumpled
and soiled letter. Hastily descending
and holding it to the fire, she looked
at the superscription—run her eye quickly
over a few lines here and there—
glanced at the signature at the bottom,
and, with an ejaculated—`Thank Heaven!
' eagerly thrust the precious prize
into that female `receptaele of things
lost on earth,' the trusty bosom. Carefully
replacing every thing as she found
it, she hurriedly left the cave, and in
another moment had announced her success
and her discoveries to her companion,
and with him was on her way homeward.
Another half hour found our heroine
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standing on the spot at the garden where
she started, safe returned from the exciting
and perilous adventures of the night,
and giving directions to her trusty little
friend to be there the next morning to
take a letter to the village to her betrothed,
to whom she could now pour out her
soul with confidence as undoubting as
the fresh lit flame of her love was unquenchable.
We will not attempt to analyze or describe
the tumultuous and mingled feelings
that agitated the bosom of May after
she found her head safely resting on
her pillow on that eventful night. Now
prayers of thankfulness at her timely discovery
of the plots of her enemies were
moving her lips—now tears of joy at the
possession of a prize bringing such happiness
to her heart were suffusing her
sleepless eyes, and now various and tantalizing
conjectures were racking her
mind as she deeply pondered on the
vague and partial intelligence she had
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obtained concerning her own history,
hitherto a blank to her, but now connected,
she no longer doubted, with her present
misfortunes, and giving rise to the
motives for her tormentor's anxiety to
force her into marriage—till her busy
thoughts and variant emotions gradually
fading and sinking into chaos, became
mingled and lost in the blank oblivion of
the living death which `nature's great restorer,
balmy sleep,' brings to the disturbed
and weary.
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CHAPTER X.
[figure description] Page 149.[end figure description]
The first dawning light of the next
morning found May eagerly poring over
the letter she had the last night so luckily
obtained. She found it all that she
expected, and all that her heart desired.
It told glowingly of his unabated affections—
of his anxiety to clasp her in his
arms, and wound off by expressing
his
hope and expectation of being able to
return some weeks sooner than he told
her at their parting. After she had finished
the perusal, and before any one
else was stirring in the house, she seized
her pen and wrote a hasty letter to Ashley,
briefly relating all that had occurred
since his departure and imploring him,
as he loved, as he would save her, to fly
to her relief.
Soon after breakfast, May caught a
glance of her new ally, coming,
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punctual to his appointment, carelessly fishing
along up the brook to the old place of
rendezvous, where he patiently awaited,
behind the intervening shrubbery, the
coming of his mistress, who soon found
opportunity to steal away unobserved
and approach him. Entrusting her letter
to his care, to be given into the postmaster's
own hand, she informed David
that she had determined to get a delay of
the time set for the wedding long enough
to allow Ashley to reach there previous
to the day to which she was in hopes of
getting the wedding postponed. This
was her first resort; and if this failed,
she must then make use of the means
which last night's adventure had given
her; for, as much as the delicacy of her
feelings recoiled at becoming the public
accuser of Gow of a crime of which she
was fearful that Martin and perhaps others
would be implicated, she believed this
the only way then left her of averting
the now doubly revolting destiny that
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[figure description] Page 151.[end figure description]
awaited her. With this, and commissioning
him to get some trifling articles at the
village store, she dismissed her messenger
with directions to repair to the same
spot on his return.
At Martin's return to the house for his
noon meal, May, feeling herself impelled
by the necessity of immediate action, and
making an effort to overcome her reluctance
to any further negotiation with one
who had acted so treacherously towards
her, gave him to understand that she was
acquainted with all the steps he had taken
as preliminary to his bestowing her
on Gow, and besought him and his wife
in the most moving terms, to relinquish
their cruel purpose. But she besought
them in vain. They replied only as she
had anticipated, by now pleading not only
her conditional promise, but what Martin
termed her after consent, and insisted
on her yielding without further ado. Perceiving
any more entreaty on this point
useless, she then begged a postponement
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for a few weeks. But this request received
even less favor than the former; and
although they had manifested no surprise
when she apprized them of her knowledge
of her publishment and the appointment
of the day of wedding, believing,
doubtless, she had heard it from some
neighbor, and being well pleased probably,
that they had thus been saved the
task of making to her an announcement
which they knew must soon be made,
and which they could hardly put on the
face to make—although they had shown
no surprise in this or her subsequent request,
yet the moment she spoke of a delay,
they started, exchanged glances of
suspicion, and without assigning the least
reason for refusing to listen to what
would have been, on their assumption of
Ashley's desertion, neither dangerous to
their purposes, nor unreasonable in itself,
pointedly denied her request, and in such
bitterness of expression and unfeeling
abuse, as drove her again in tears from
the room.
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`He will have it so,' said May, after
sitting awhile alone indulging in grief, and
revolving in mind the different chances
now left for her escape from the threatened
fate, `there is no other way short of
exposing Gow and bringing him to justice;
and if it involves Martin, the fault is
not mine—gladly, for all his baseness
and cruelty, gladly would I save him from
digrace, and perhaps a prison, for having
given me a home—once a kind home,
however the bad passions may have since
twisted his heart. But he will have it so;
and now for the speediest method of
bringing the character and crimes of that
dark villain, Gow, to light.'
Such was the stern resolution to which
our heroine had reluctantly arrived.—
Gladly, as she said, would she, in remembrance
of the past, and even in forgetfulness
of the present, have averted
from the head of her foster father the infamy
which she had reason to believe
would fall upon him in consequence of
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[figure description] Page 154.[end figure description]
the measures she had now been driven to
the alternative of adopting—joyfully have
flown to him on her return from the
mountain—imparted her discoveries, and
thus have saved him and herself from the
consequences of Gow's villany, had she
believed him only to be the innocent dupe
of the other's artifice. But this she
could scarcely believe, for from the great
intimacy obviously existing between the
two, from the part Martin had taken relative
to the forged letter, and from his
character for intrigue, low cunning and
avarice, which she knew to be his leading
traits, she drew the partially erroneous
conclusion, that they were confederates,
not only in entrapping her, but in coining
money and duping their other associates.
Under these circumstances, therefore,
every measure of this kind, she supposed
would be useless, and might be the
means of defeating her own objects.
Towards night shrewd David returned
from the village, and his employer again
met him alone at the usual place.
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`Well, David, I have had more troubles
since I saw you—I have entirely failed in
my attempt to gain time—but you delivered
the letter—and there was nothing
in the office for me?'
`Yes! No!'
`O, if there could been one! I did
not much expect one, however—but did
you remember my little errand?'
`The silk thread? Yes, Miss May,
here it is in this paper.'
May took the parcel from the boy, and
opening it, disengaged the silk from the
wrapper—the latter was a printed paper,
and she listlessly began running over the
contents, when she soon started, as if
finding something which had caused her
some sudden emotion.
`Where did you get this paper, David,
' earnestly asked she, her eyes still riveted
on the words before her.
`Why, the storekeeper puts it round
the silk.'
`Did he say where he obtained it?—
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This is not such as they usually wrap
their goods in—it is a printed handbill.'
`Yes, I remembers now; he first says
his wrapping paper's all out—then he
goes to the door swung back inside, and
tears down a paper and says, this has
been here long enough, and wraps the
silk in it.'
`Do you know how it reads, David?'
`No! I never opens it—what is it,
Miss May, that makes you look so queer
about it?'
`Now, David,' she continued, after
reading the description of the thief's person,
and the horse he had abducted;
`now tell me, have you ever seen such
a person as is here described?'
`Why,' replied the boy, after dropping
his head in thought, `Why, I thinks he
must be that mister's own brother, it's
so like him.'
`Nearer home than that—it is Gow
himself!'
`By zounds!'
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`Yes, I know more than you do about
this,' and she related the scene that she
and her lover witnessed on Gow's first
coming into the settlement.
`Sure, it is then,' said the boy musingly
after she had ended, `but does
them what tells where he is get the money?
'
`Some of it I presume, but this is little
of my concern—those who will take
him away shall be welcome to the reward,
and as much more if I had it to
give them. No, no, not for the reward,
but to git rid of him is my anxiety.—
And I shold prefer this way to any other
for doing it, as it will take him at
once out of the country, and involve nobody
else. David, will you go again to
the village to-morrow—take this to Mr.
Mundle, the sheriff, and without making
use of my name, inform him the thief is
here, and tell him where and how he
may be taken?'
`I does it, by the pipers!'
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`And if they do not come on immediately
after him, come here to morrow
night after dark to inform me of your
success.'
The active little messenger, faithful to
his trust, was at the village at an early
hour the next day, and promptly seeking
out Mundle, gave him the hand bill, accompanying
it with the information he
was directed to give; but his communication
was not received by the wary
dealer of rogues with such cordiality
and such ready confidence as he and
his mistress had anticipated. The sheriff
being one of those shrewd and cautious
men who must understand the motives,
and see himself all the springs of
action producing any given measure before
they make up any decided opinion
concerning it, questioned the boy very
closely relative to the causes of his coming;
whether some one had not put him
up to this through emnity to the accused;
thinking it rather strange that this
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discovery should not have been made
before concerning a man who had been
in the settlement so many weeks, and
who was, as the publishment the preceding
Sunday at the village meeting apprized
him, about to be married into one
of the principal families of the former
place, and deeming a knowledge of all
this essential, to any reliance on the lad's
story, he himself having never seen
Gow, and Ashley, the only witness referred
to, being absent. But in endeavoring
to conceal the name of his employer,
as she directed, and disdaining
to mirepresent, David's answers became
confused, and finally he refused to reply
to any more questions, still reiterating,
however, that he knew Gow was a
villain, and the one who stole the horse
which, having been to the spot on his
way to the village, he said might still be
seen in the bed of the brook, where the
body was thrown, in such a state of preservation
as to enable one to identify
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sundry marks described in the hand bill.
`I wish you would tell me, my lad,'
said the sheriff, musingly, `who is at the
bottom of this; but you may have good
reasons after all for your conduct, for I
have often heard of you, when I have
been up in the neighborhood, as an honest,
capable boy; and in a day or two I
will inquire into this affair.'
But David was not to be put off in this
way. He still hung round the sheriff
and continued to urge his request to
have something done immediately.
`Well, well, boy,' said Mundle at
length, wearied by the importunity of
the former, `we may as well see what
steps can be taken, if your story is true,
now as ever, so go with me to squire
Johnson's.'
They accordingly proceeded to the
village justice, when the sheriff made
known David's story, and the poor boy
was again subjected to a close scrutiny
by his honor, resulting however much
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the same as his previous examination.—
The Justice and the Sheriff then held a
consultation apart. After which the latter
came and told David that as Gow
had never been arrested in New Hampshire,
where the horse was stolen, it was
their opinion that they had no authority
to take him till they had written on and
obtained a warrant there; but that, as
the Justice thought he had once seen
Gow in passing by Martin's some week's
before, and believed he would answer to
the description of the hand bill, they had
concluded to go on with the business,
which, if every thing was kept still, might
be brought about in a week or ten days,
and that therefore he had better now go
home, and saying a syllable to no one
on the subject, wait patiently for their
movements.
`A whole week!' exclaimed David
with a look of disappointment and regret,
`it will then be too late—to'ther thing
must be done.'
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`Why too late, my lad,' asked both
gentlemen at once, `why too late, and
what other thing do you mean?'
`Why I guesses I wont tell now—no,
not till I sees first.' And so saying the
boy turned on his heel and vanished,
leaving his auditors greatly puzzled how
to understand his singular conduct, and
more than half inclined to believe his
whole story a sheer fabrication.
Our heroine, who had hailed with
pleasure this last measure which had so
unexpectedly opened for accomplishing
in the least objectionable way her purposes,
and who, confidently relying on
success, had waited all day with trembling
solicitude for the effect which she
expected the communication of her messenger
would immediately produce, listened
with no small degree of pain and
disappointment to the account which
David gave her that night after his return
of the failure of his mission; for
failure it was as to all that regarded the
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main objects she had in view. Deeply,
did she regret, that not seeing the possibility
of such a result, she had restricted
the boy, whose prudence and sagacity
would have otherwise prompted him
to adopt her other measure in reserve;
and bitterly did she now denounce that
hesitation and false delicacy which had
prevented her after her visit to the cavern
from immediately taking the most efficient
measures within her reach for effecting
a purpose which she more and
more became convinced her duty to herself,
her lover, and to the public, alike
loudly demanded at her hands; and she
trembled to think that only one more
business day intervened before the dreaded
Tuesday, which she began to fear was
destined to seal the doom of her wretchedness.
`Go, David,' she said, `go early Monday
morning again to the village, there
is now no more time for doubts or delays—
go, go seek out Mundle and
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Johnson, tell them all—tell them that May
Martin has been in the very den of these
villains, overheard their plots—seen and
handled their tools for counterfeiting—
even found the false dollars they had
made with them, and that she will not
hesitate to swear to it all—tell them this,
and whatever else they require and you
know, and see if that will not arouse
them to action—go my faithful friend,
every thing now depends on you—I
know you will not desert me now, go,
and may heaven speed you.'
The next day, it being Sunday, Gow
visited Martin's. It was the first time
May had seen him since her visit to the
cavern; and she recoiled from his approach
as from the touch of a viper,
while she could scarcely keep her tongue
from giving expression to the feelings of
indignation and abhorrence with which
his presence now more than ever filled
her bosom. He did not long remain to
add to her distress by his hated
-- 165 --
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presence; for, after a few fruitless trials to
reconcile her to his attentions, he petulently
gave up the attempt and departed
to join his more congenial companion in
their mountain retreat, leaving his intended
victim, whom he now considered already
secure in his toils without further
effort, to count the slow and lingering
hours which must pass before she could
be cheered with the consciousness that
something was doing to snatch her from
her impending fate. Monday at last came,
but with it, to the utter discomfiture of
May, came a drenching rain storm,
which she knew must prevent her messenger
from proceeding on her mission.
Often and vainly during this gloomy day
did she strain her anxious eye in gazing
at the dark and impenetrable clouds to
catch some sign of the storm's abating.
But no such appearance greeted her
sight. The rain continued to pour in
ceaseless torrents, till night, closing in
with Egyptian darkness, cut off all hope
-- 166 --
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for the efforts of that day and sent her
once more to her cheerless pillow, dejected
and fast beginning to despond of
her extrication from the fate to which
the current of events, in spite of her
means of resisting it, appeared sweeping
her on, and which the very elements
themselves seemed combined to fix upon
her. She did not however despair.
She knew if David could go to the village
in the morning, and succeed in
rousing them there to immediate action,
they would reach the settlement time
enough for her rescue. At the worst
she determined either to proclaim Cow's
villainy before the clergyman and assembled
company, if matters came to
that pass, and resist the proceeding of
the ceremony on the spot, or secretly
elope from the house and fly to some
friendly roof for protection. After a
night of inexpressible anxiety and wretchedness,
she started at the first faint dawning
of the morning light, from her
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perturbed slumbers, hastily rose and went
to the window. To her great joy the
rain had wholly ceased and the clouds,
that yesterday enveloped the earth like
a shroud of mantling blackness, having
now broken away and disappeared, had
given place to a clear sky and a bland
atmosphere. After standing a while to
let the soft and balmy breeze fan her feverish
brow, she dressed herself and
went down into the yard. Knowing it
would be some time before the inmates
of the house would be likely to rise, and
fearing that her little friend might not
proceed on her mission without a fresh
bidding, she slowly proceeded up the
road towards his residence, which was in
plain sight, about a quarter of a mile distant,
with the hope that she might see
him round the door to beckon to him to
meet her. She had proceeded but a
few rods however before she unexpectedly
encountered him approaching.
`Where now, David,' she said, `I can
-- 168 --
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hardly expect you have started out on
my business so early—I was fearful you
had forgotten it, and was coming to see
if I could get a word with you before the
folks were up.'
`Forgets! that ain't David Butler—
but how it rained yesterday! I ached all
day to be a going.'
`But have you really started for the
village? How did you get away so very
early?'
`Why, I tells you how it was—mother
haunts me to know what for I goes
all these times, and last night she promises
to say nothing about it, so I tells
her all—well, then, she gets into a taking—
says Miss May is a poor injured
orphan and God will protect her. Then
after she goes to bed I hears her in the
night crying again about it, and praying
like. Then she gets up afore day and
says she can't sleep, so gets me some
breakfast and tells me to go right off.'
`It was right, perhaps, David, that
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you should tell your mother, and I feel
very grateful for her sympathy,' said
May, brushing away the tears that had
started during this simple recital of the
interest her wrongs had awakened in the
bosom of her pious and unpretending
neighbor, `but do you still feel willing
to go and do as I last directed you?'
`I goes till I wears my feet off to my
knees, to save Miss May for Mr Ashley,'
was the heroic reply.
`Go then—there may be time enough
yet for all; go my little friend, and may
kind heaven grant you success.'
-- 170 --
CHAPTER XI.
[figure description] Page 170.[end figure description]
We will now change the scene of our
little story which the events of this little
day were destined to bring to a fearful
determination.
On a road deeply embowered in the
heavy forest, about fifteen miles south of
the Harwood settlement, and half that
distance from the village before mentioned,
a solitary horseman in the afternoon
of the day so momentous to the fortunes
of our heroine, was pursuing his lonely
way towards the scenes we have just left.
The day was one of uncommon sultriness
even for the sultry month of August;
and the traveller occasionally
plucking a fresh bough from the overhanging
branches to keep off the flies
that were swarming around his vexed
horse, and stinging him at times to madness,
seemed to look with compassion on
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[figure description] Page 171.[end figure description]
the foamy sides of the suffering animal,
and often appeared to repress the involuntary
motion which he frequently made
to urge him forward at a quicker pace.
`It is cruel,' at length said the rider
seemingly addressing his horse, `it is
cruel in me to force you on at this rate
in this suffocating air, merely to gratify
my selfish feelings—you have no loving
and loved one in prospect to incite your
steps to speed.' So saying he threw the
reins loosely on to the dripping mane of
the horse, and for the next mile amused
himself with watching the flies and endeavoring
with a sort of malicious pleasure
to strike down the most determined
of their band, as these little winged tormentors
were settling on their wincing
victim, and often goading him into a
trot.
Arriving now to where another road
from the eastward fell into the one he
was travelling, Ashley, for such, as the
reader has doubtless already
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[figure description] Page 172.[end figure description]
anticipated, was our traveller, making his way
to the settlement and intending to take
his mistress by an agreeable surprise, it
being considerably sooner than she had
reason to expect his return—Ashley, we
say, at this point of intersection was
joined by another horseman. The man
was considerably past the prime of life,
and his hair, indeed, began to be slightly
sprinkled by the frost of time; while his
features, really handsome and commanding,
wore something of the pensive and
thoughtful cast. Bowing with the respectful
ease peculiar to the well bred,
a class to which from both his dress and
demeanor, he very evidently belonged,
he fell in by the side of Ashley.
`Our travelling fortunes seem to unite
here,' said the stranger as a languid
smile played gently on his lips.
`That smile thought Ashley, and those
features too seem familiar to me—I must
have seen them, or something like them,
somewhere, though certainly I know not
-- 173 --
[figure description] Page 173.[end figure description]
this man;' and he mused awhile, but
vainly, in trying to recal some more definite
remembrance, or to account for the
impression thus received. After some
common-place conversation about roads,
distances and the like, the stranger observed,
`From some of your remarks, sir, I
am led to conclude that you are a resident
somewhere in the vicinity—may I
ask how far you proceed in this direction?
'
`I am going to Harwood settlement,
as the place is called—it is my residence,
now something near twelve miles distant,
' replied Ashley.
`Indeed!' said the stranger, with evident
interest, `I too, propose going to
that place.'
`Do you?' asked the other, throwing
an inquiring glance on his companion as
if conjecturing his probable business, `a
proprietor of lands in the neighborhood,
I conclude we may call you, or perhaps
about to become a purchaser?'
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`Or perhaps a curious traveller in
search of the novel and picturesque
among your wild mountains,' evasively
said the stranger with a good natured
smile.
`That smile again!' said Ashley to
himself; and he began to feel an undefinable
interest growing in his bosom towards
his new acquaintance.
`Do you know,' resumed the elder
traveller after a few moment's silence,
`do you know a family in your settlement
by the name of Martin?'
`Intimately,' replied Ashley with a
look in which some surprise as well as
inquiry was exhibited.
`Has he much of a family?'
`Rather small I should call it, sir,—
he has no children of his own.'
`Of his own?—has he those of others
living with him?'
Growing more and more surprised and
sensitive at the inquiries of the stranger
as they touched at every question nearer
-- 175 --
[figure description] Page 175.[end figure description]
and nearer the great point of interest to
his own feellugs, Ashley, with visible
emotion and some hesitation, replied,
`there is a young lady living with Mr.
Martin in the character of an adopted
daughter; or rather that was the case
when I left there about five weeks since.'
`Her name and age if you will sir?'
`They call her May, and after their
family name—her age lacks some months
of eighteen,' again replied Ashley in a
somewhat constrained and half jealous
tone and manner, which the stranger
seemed keenly to scrutinize.
`And this Martin removed hither from
the borders of New Hampshire where he
formerly resided?'
`He did.'
`The people there then told me correctly,
' said the stranger in an under tone
apparently communing with himself; `but,'
he continued again raising his voice to a
conversational pitch and turning to Ashley,
`but as you appear so familiar with
-- 176 --
[figure description] Page 176.[end figure description]
the girl's age &c. you may also be able
to tell me something of her character, and
the standing she maintains among you?'
`You would hardly ask those questions
about May Martin, sir, if you had
seen or heard much of her,' said Ashley,
somewhat resentfully. I could easily answer
them by merely reiterating the
unanimous voice of her neighbors; but
before you pursue your inquiries any
further, or at least before you expect answers
to such as you may be pleased to
put on the subject, I must beg of you to
tell me your motives for so doing. Miss
Martin is a valued friend of mine, and
is somewhat critically situated in the family
in which she resides, and I know not
what use may be made of the information
I am thus imparting to an entire
stranger. You will excuse my plainness,
I trust sir.'
The other turned a full and searching
look on Ashley, which was met by the
latter by one of equal scrutiny and something
of sternness and hauteur.
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`You are right, probably, young gentleman,
' rejoined the elder traveller,
after they had pursued their way some
rods in constrained silence, `the interest
we sometimes feel in a particular subject
may lead us to forget the bounds which
it is prudent and proper should circumscribe
our intercourse with strangers;
but we will drop the subject now; perhaps
we may know more of each other
hereafter.'
Without allowing Ashley much chance
to puzzle himself in trying to make out
the character and objects of his companion,
or to reflect on the remarks which
had lallen from his lips, the latter immediately
directed the discourse to indifferent
subjects, and the conversation soon
relapsed into its former tone of amicableness;
though Ashley sometimes thought
he could perceive an anxiety on the part
of the other to draw out his information,
as well as to ascertain his views and
principles on the various points which
-- 178 --
[figure description] Page 178.[end figure description]
there was some appearance of having
been started for the purpose.
It was nearly five o'clock in the afternoon
before our travellers arrived at the
snug little village, which, like most other
villages in Vermont, embosomed among
the rough hills and clustered round a
water-fall, served as the place of business
and trade,—the miniature emporium, in
fact, of Harwood settlement, and other
parts of the surrounding country to many
miles in extent. One glance sufficed to
tell Ashley that something of more than
ordinary occurrence was afoot among
the villagers. Here stood small clubs of
men engaged in low and earnest conversation,
there horses were being saddled
and led out in haste as if for some sudden
expedition, while numbers were passing
in and out the tavern, one room of
which, as seen through the open windows,
appeared to be occupied by a dense
crowd. Scarcely had Ashley reached
the ground and thrown the reins of his
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horse to a waiter, before shrewd David,
running to his side and exclaiming in
tones of joyous exultation, `O Mr. Ashley
is come!' grasped with convulsive
eagerness the hand of his old friend in
both of his, and burst into tears.
`Why, my little friend David! is this
you here—but crying! how is this? what
has happened? and what is all this going
on here?' rapidly asked Ashley in surprise.
`God bless you, Ashley!' cried Mundle,
now rushing out of the house, `the
very man of all others on earth I have
been praying most to see! but come with
me—I have a story for your ear, and
there is not much time to be lost in the
telling, as you will think yourself, I presume,
when you have heard it.' So saying,
and taking the arm of our hero, bewildered
at what he saw and heard, he
led him aside, with little David wiping his
eyes, and still unable to speak for his
emotion, following them close at their
heels.
-- 180 --
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While Ashley was thus engaged, his
companion of the road had entered the
rude piazza which ran along the front of
the house, and seating himself on a bench
sat, apparently scanning the different faces
around him, and listening to such remarks
as fell within his hearing, as if willing
to gather the cause of the commotion
among the people, without concerning
himself so far as to make any direct
enquiries respecting it. He had not been
seated here but a moment, however, before
the former rushed by him into the
house and hastily bespoke a fresh horse
of the landlord, to be saddled with all
possible despatch. The horse was almost
instantly at the door; while Mundle,
with a stout assistant, who in the
mean time had got in readiness for a
start, now rode up and called on Ashley
to mount. As the latter was about
springing into his saddle, his late travelling
companion stepped quickly up and
touched him on the arm.
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[figure description] Page 181.[end figure description]
`Do you leave me, sir?' said he with
some earnestness.
`I must,' was the quick reply, `I have
just learned that which will urge me to
the settlement much faster than you
would wish to travel, but I shall see you
there tomorrow—good day, sir.'
`Nay, one moment—let me but ask
whom your unexpected intelligence concerns?
'
`Myself.'
`No others?'
`One.'
`The young lady concerning whom I
enquired?'
`Most deeply.'
`Enough?—I attend you—landlord,
my horse instantly.'
`But your horse—he will hardly keep
pace with our fresh ones.'
`He shall at least try it, sir,' said the
stranger in a determined tone, as he now
received his horse from the expert waiter
and sprang into the saddle.
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In another moment the little cavalcade
were clattering at full gallop up the
road towards the settlement, followed by
a wagon containing another assistant and
shrewd David, with cords and iron hand
cuffs to bind and secure the prisoner
or prisoners.
Before following them we will pause
an instant to bring up the events of our
story as they occurred at the village, be-before
Ashley's unexpected arrival.
David, it seems, had proceeded directly
to the village on leaving May that
morning. On arriving there, still at a
very early hour, he immediately went to
search out Mundle and Johnson, the executive
and judicial functionaries of the
law to whom he applied on his previous
visit to the village; but both of these
gentlemen had just ridden out, and, to
his great vexation, nobody could tell
where they had gone or when they would
return. Without the least thought of
yielding to this disappointment, the
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[figure description] Page 183.[end figure description]
trusty little messenger awaited their coming
many long hours in an agony of impatience
and anxiety. And it was not till
about noon that he caught sight of them
approaching. He flew to meet and detain
them on the road till they listened
to his whole story.
`Well my lad,' said Mundle after he
had satisfied himself by many now readily
answered enquiries, `you have told
your story this time as you should do, to
have us believe it; though I see you
were not to blame for not doing so the
other day—I have had some hints of this
money digging up there before, and suspected
monkery; but good God! Johnson,
would you have believed there could
have been found a man in Vermont guilty
of the baseness of Martin towards a
girl who has all the claims of a daughter?
Thank heaven, however, there is
time enough yet, to stop all this, by just
caging my gentleman bridegroom and
his friend, before they dream of such
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[figure description] Page 184.[end figure description]
accommodations. Come! on to our dinners—
then make out a warrant, Johnson,
in no time—I will be ready to take
it before it is dry; and you, my boy,
home with me,—you deserve a dozen
dinners for your faithfulness to that noble
girl!'
After an hour spent in waiting for and
eating his dinner, and another or two in
looking up forms and writing a warrant,
the dilatory justice was about bringing
his labors to a close, when in came the
merchant holding in his hand a couple of
counterfeit dollars which he said had
just been passed at his store by a man
from Harwood settlement, and demanded
a warrant for his apprehension before
he left the place. Here was an interruption
that was not to be avoided, and
David, who had determined not to leave
the ground till he saw the sheriff on his
way, and who had watched the slow progress
of the justice with the most restless
impatience, as he now saw them
-- 185 --
[figure description] Page 185.[end figure description]
drop the business, which was his only
concern, and proceed to this new case,
lost all control of his feelings and fairly
cried with vexation and disappointment.
After a while, however, which seemed
another age to the poor boy, both warrants
were finished, and the sheriff despatched
to arrest in the first place the
last discovered candidate for his greeting
favors. But, though Mundle performed
his duty much more expeditiously than
the other, it was yet nearly five in the
afternoon before he had secured the prisoner,
placed him in the custody of others
before the court at the tavern, and
got released from his charge in order to
proceed to the settlement, which he was
just on the point of doing when Ashley
rode up to the door.
We will now follow the sheriff and his
posse, proceeding on with furious speed
to a more interesting scene of action.
Proceeding with all the speed they
could urge, being led on by Ashley who,
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burning with impatience to reach the
abode of his periled mistress before forever
too late, kept several rods in advance
calling loudly and repeatedly on the rest
to come on, they had not gone half their
distance before their horses, now recking
with sweat and covered with sheets of
foam, began to manifest great distress,
and show evident signs of giving out unless
speedily suffered to relax.
`Hold! hold up! Ashley,' exclaimed
Mundle, `this will never do—we gain
nothing by it. With this speed, and in
such a stifling heat as this, two miles
more and our horses drop dead under us.
And yours will be the first to fail, see!
how he already falters! A moment's
consideration convinced Ashley of the
justice of the sheriff's remarks and they
all immediately relaxed into a moderate
trot. It had been throughout, as before
remarked, a day of unusual heat and sultriness.
And now, although the sun had
been for some hours obscured by a deep
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haze slowly gathering over it, the heat
was still painfully oppressive. The atmosphere
indeed seemed every moment
to grow more murky and suffocating.—
Not a leaf, even of the ever-trembling
aspen, responded to a single vibration of
the deadened air, while the birds sat panting,
listless and mute on the boughs,
scarcely moving at the nearest approach
of man. And all nature seemed sunk into
one of those lethargic calms so ominous,
in the warmer latitudes, of the coming
tempest. Nor, in the present instance
were the more palpable indications
of a thunder storm much longer
wanting. Every moment darker and
broader sheets of vapor rose up majestically
from the west, casting a deeper
and more lurid shade over the earth;
and soon the low, deep peals of muttering
thunder came booming on the ear,
increasing each instant in loudness and
frequency. The company, now beginning
to be observant of the approaching
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shower soon came on to the top of a high
knoll which gave them, over the tops of
the intervening forest, an open and unobstructed
view of the western horizon.
One broad, black mass of upheaving
clouds lay directly in front, extending
round on either side to the north and
south as far as the eye could reach;
while in the centre of this fearful rack a
huge column of vapor, doubling and eddying
like a seething caldron, was rolring
up with the blackness and rapidity
of the smoke of burning pitch.
`Heavens and earth!' exclaimed Mundle
glancing at the scene before him,
`in fifteen minutes that terrific cloud
will burst upon us in all the fury of a
tornado—it is but two miles now—our
horses will stand it in this freshening
breeze—let us clear the woods, at least,
before the tempest strikes us.' And they
again applied whip and spur and put
their horses upon a keen run.
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CHAPTER XII.
[figure description] Page 189.[end figure description]
We must now return to our long neglected
heroine, to recount the occurrences
of the day at Martin's. Slowly to
her passed the anxious day which was destined
to be the last for her ever being
known by the name of May Martin.—
The forenoon was mostly occupied in
making such scanty preparations as Mrs.
Martin chose to direct for the reception
of the company at the expected ceremony
in the evening. In all these May assisted
with a sort of unnatural alacrity, but
with as great a degree of composure as
her troubled feelings would permit her to
assume. As noon approached she expected
every moment to hear the trampling
of horses at the door as the fruits of
her message, which she supposed must
have been delivered hours before. But
noon and afternoon came and still no
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tidings from the village were heard—no
signs of either messenger or the success
of his message were discoverable. Often
and vainly did she strain her aching
sight towards the woods, in the direction
whence the expected succour was to appear,
to catch a glimpse of approaching
horsemen. One o'clock, two, and three
passed, and still they came not. Perhaps
they might have been led by David
round in the woods to the cave without
coming into the clearing—perhaps Gow
was already secured and on his way back
to the village—and the thought, this hope
grasped thought, for a while relieved her.
But even this faint gleam of consolation
soon vanished by the appearance of Gow
himself, come to dress and prepare for
the ceremony. With a hint from Mrs.
Martin that it was time she had began to
dress herself for the company, May now
retired to her room, and carefully fastening
the door, flung herself on her bed in
an agony of grief and despair. But
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impelled by the painful consciousness that
the crisis was at hand when she must
yield to her fate or speedily do something
to avert it, and now fast relinquishing all
hope in the success of the plan on which
she had been relying for her extrication,
she soon roused herself, and summoned
all her energies for deciding what course
to pursue on the fearful emergency.—
Could she trust herself to carry into effect
one of the alternatives she had resolved
on in failure of Gow's arrest, that
of denouncing him and resisting the proceeding
of the ceremony? Could she
command her feelings sufficient to do this—
should she not be overawed by Martin
and his wife? And even should she
make the attempt, would her story gain
credence, after keeping so long silent,
and suffering the affair to glide along to
the very hour of consummation without
making known her situation? The more
she reflected on this project the more did
her resolution waver.—She had a female
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friend who had not long since married
and settled on the road a few miles north
of Harwood settlement, and her resolution
was soon formed to attempt to escape
from the house and try to reach the
residence of her friend that night.—
Scarce had she formed this resolution before
casting her eye up the road she beheld
in the distance a man approaching
on horseback, whom, from the color of
his horse, she instantly recognized to be
the minister who had been engaged to officiate
on the occasion.—She had seen
him pass the preceding Saturday on his
way to a town a short distance to the
north where, at stated intervals, he
preached; and she but too well knew the
reason of his happening along on his return
at this hour. Now aware that not
another moment was to be lost, she seized
a common bonnet and cautiously letting
herself down from the window which
opened into the garden, glided through
the shurbbery, swift and noiseless as the
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wild bird stealing to its covert, slipped
through the fence, and, entering a field of
tall grain immediately beyond, escaped
unseen towards the woods in a northerly
direction. On reaching the woods she
paused a moment to glance at the clouds,
which were now beginning to heave up
over the tops of the mountains in heavy
masses, accompanied at short intervals by
the low, short, and scarcely perceptible
rumbling of the distant thunder, affording
her indubitable evidence of the approaching
storm. But she hesitated not.
What to her feelings were the terrors of
a thunder storm to the scene she had just
left, in which, but for her flight, she must
soon be the principal actor? Pausing no
longer than to decide how she should
best shape her course to avoid all observation
from the road and the open grounds
on the right, and prevent becoming entangled
or bewildered in the depths of the
wilderness on the left, she now plunged
into the woods, and keeping just within
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their borders, pressed on with rapid steps
towards her destination. She had not
proceeded far, however, before the occasional
rusting of bushes and the crackling
of sticks and brush breaking under
the tread at some distance on her left, apprised
her of the presence of some one
apparently endeavoring to keep pace with
her for the purpose of dogging her steps.
And soon catching a glimpse of his person
in a glance over her shoulder as with
quickened steps she pursued he way, the
alarming truth at once flashed across her
mind. It was the accomplice of Gow,
the old man she had seen in the cavern,
who was following her. Calculating to
leave the valley that night he had packed
up, and having come down from his retreat,
was awaiting, at a convenient stand
at the skirt of the woods in plain sight of
Martin's, a signal promised by Gow as
soon as the knot was fairly tied, intending
to depart secretly from the settlement
the moment this evidence of the
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completion of their infamous work was displayed.—
And it was while standing here concealed
from the view of others in a clump
of bushes and patiently watching for the
promised signal, that he caught sight of
May gliding into the woods but a short
distance below him. Though soon conjecturing
from the course she came that
it could be no other than their intended
victim, he yet suspected not at first her
real object; and, thinking she might
have come to the wood for the purpose
of obtaining some favorite shrub or evergreen
to deck her room for the occasion,
he suffered her to proceed some
way before it occurred to him that she
was actually escaping from their net.—
Unwilling on account of his own safety
to cause any outcry which he was fearful
she might raise if he made any attempt
to detain her by force, he determined
to get ahead of her and endeavor
to frighten her back to the house. But
in this he soon found himself baffled; for
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instead of being able te get before her,
he found much difficulty, so rapid was
her flight, even in overtaking and keeping
her in sight. Resolving however not
to lose the advantage of this, that he
might dog her to the house where she
fled for shelter for the night, and return
and apprise his accomplice of the place
of her refuge, he redoubled his exertions
and succeeded barely in accomplishing
this part of his purpose as far as the pursuer
and pursued were permitted to proceed.
But to return to the wretched fugitive.
Having been nurtured among the mountains,
and accustomed from infancy to
exercise in their invigorating breezes, her
naturally active limbs had acquired an
elasticity and a capability of enduring
fatigue, which are unknown to females
of older countries, and which came in
good stead on the present occasion.—
Fleeing, like some frighted nymph of
heathen fable before a pursuing demon,
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her lips parted, her hands thrust eagerly
forward, and her loosened and disordered
tresses streaming wildly behind
her, she bounded along over log, rock
and rivulet with a rapidity which fear only
could have incited, and which the delirious
energy of desperation alone could
have sustained. While every glance,
which at times she hastily threw back
over her shoulder at the fearful visage
forever peering through the bushes in
hot pursuit behind her, added a fresh impulse
to her exertions and quickened
her speed. The thunder now burst in
terrific peals over her head—tall trees
were uprooted and huried to the earth
by the furious blast, or, shivered in the
fiercely quivering blaze of the lightning,
fell in fragments around her; yet she
paused not in her course—the rain poured
in a deluging torent over her drenched
person, yet she heeded it not; but
catching the big drops in her parched
lips as they gratefully beat over her
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fevered and burning brow, she fled on—
on, regardless of all exposure and forgetful
of all danger but one.
Having now passed the last house of
the settlement, she, just as night and
cloud were fast combining to spread their
dark mantle over the earth, varied her
course, and struck obliquely into the
road. Here pausing an instant in doubt
whether to fly to the nearest house, or go
on in pursuance of her original determination,
she indistinctly caught sight of the
form of her pursuer, who had struck into
the road some distance below her, & thus
cut off her chance of return. Nerving
herself once more for the trial, she pressed
on up the road for her first destination,
now about two miles distant, with
no other means of distinguishing her way
than what the occasional flashes of lightning
afforded.
Although the rain immediately over
head had now sensibly abated, yet the
deep, earth-jarring roar on the left, as if
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from the incessant pouring of a cataract,
plainly told that the storm was still spending
its force with unexampled fury on
the mountains. And the proof of this
soon became visible to our heroine in the
rapidly increasing torrents that came rushing
down tha steep acclivities, overflowing
the road and threatening at every step
to put an entire stop to her progress.—
Arriving at length at the northern outlet
of the valley, where the mountains shut
down so close to the pond as to leave little
more than space for the road to pass between
them, she came abreast of one of
the mountain ravines, where, at ordinary
times, a small brook crossed the road.
It was now swollen to a rushing river,
before which no human strength could
have stood an instant. To attempt to
pass this she saw was but madness; and,
as she heard the splashing footsteps of her
pursuer but a short distance behind her,
despair now for the first time sent its chill
to her heart. But while standing on the
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[figure description] Page 200.[end figure description]
brink of the dashing flood, which at every
wave rose higher and higher, hesitating
whether to commit herself to the raging
element, or the scarcely less dreaded
power of her pursuer, a flash of lightning
revealed to her sight a shelving rock
jutting out from the side of the hill a few
rods back, and so aloof from the road and
screened from it by intervening boughs,
as to afford her, she believed, if reached
unseen, a good concealment from her
indefatigable enemy, and a safe retreat
from the waters which were now rising
around her with the most frightful rapidity.
Making directly for the hill, and
scrambling up the slanting rocks at the
foot with the expiring energy of despair,
she gained the place and dropped down
exhausted on the spot, just as another
flash partially revealed to her sight the
form of the old man hurrying by, and
rushing up to the brink of the stream she
had left but an instant before. Recoiling
from the view of the threatening and
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[figure description] Page 201.[end figure description]
impassable torrent, and throwing one
wild glance around him, in which horror
for the supposed fate of his victim, and
alarm for his own safety seemed equally
mingled, he hastily retreated back along
the road. But before he had proceeded
many rods, the gathering and pent
waters above, as if suddenly bursting
through their opposing barriers, in a
mighty torrent came rushing down a corresponding
ravine beyond the ridge a little
distance to the south, and wholly cut
off his retreat. Meanwhile the noise on
the mountain every moment grew louder
and louder. The deep, distant roar, as
of pouring torrents, which had for some
time been heard, now became mingled
with the tumultuous crashing of falling
forests, the hissing, swashing sounds of
disturbed and changing volumes of water,
and the slow, heavy, intermitting jar
of vast bodies of water just beginning to
move. Nearer and nearer it came,—
and now the earth trembled and shook
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seemingly to its lowest foundations, as
with gathering impetus, the mighty mass
came rolling down the steep sides of the
mountain directly towards the spot where
the terror struck girl lay concealed, and
her no less affrighted pursuer, a few yards
below, was wildly running to and fro,
vainly looking for some chance to escape.
Anon it became rapidly light, as
from some steady kindling blaze above,
which, growing more luminous and dazzling
every instant, soon gleaming fiercely
along the surface of the bubbling pond,
and flashing broad and bright over the
opposite mountains, lit up the whole amphitheatre
of encircling hills, from the
darkness of midnight to the splendors of
noonday.[3] Starting upon her feet, May
looked around her in mute consternation.
Nearer and more deafening rose the tremendous
din above her—roaring, crashing,
grinding along, with the noise of ten
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[figure description] Page 203.[end figure description]
thousand thunders and with concussions
that made the solid earth heave and bound
beneath her feet, down, down came the
avalanche with fearful velocity towards
her. In another instant the mighty mass,
dividing on the solid ledge beneath which
she stood, began to rush by her on either
side in two vast, high, turbid volumes,
revolving monstrous stones and hurling
trees over trees in their progress, and
like some huge launch, driving with amazing
force into the receding waters of
the pond—while at the same time the
forest around and above her, waved, shook,
toppled and fell in an awful crash on the
rocks over her head. She saw, she heard
no more, but sank stunned and senseless
on the ground. And, passing from the
insensibility occasioned by the shock into
a profound sleep, which, without a full
recovering of her consciousness, immediately
stole over her as her overstrained
faculties ceased their exertion, she lay
till the great struggle of the elements was
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[figure description] Page 204.[end figure description]
over, and the storm passed by. At length,
however, she slowly awoke. The dreadful
tumult that last assailed her conscious
ear was now hushed, and all was still
save the steady rushing of the diminished
waters. The stars shone out brightly,
giving her a dim view of the wild
scenes of havoc and desolation which the
fearful power of the avalanche had spread
around her. The trunk of a large tree
lay directly across the rocks within a few
feet of her head. She saw how narrowly
she had escaped death, and she devoutly
thanked heaven for the preservation.
A faint groan issuing from the ruins a
short distance from where she lay, now
reached her ear. It was the poor wretch
who had caused all her trials, now lying
wounded and buried beneath the top of
the same tree that had spared his intended
victim. But before she had time to
indulge in the mingled emotions which
this was bringing over her, she heard
voices. Presently lights appeared on the
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[figure description] Page 205.[end figure description]
pond, and a boat with several men shot
along the shore directly against her. It
now paused in its course, and some one
repeated loudly her name. Did she hear
rightly? Else why did the tones of that
voice thrill through every fibre of her
frame? She shrieked in reply, and tried
to move, but her benumbed and worn
limbs refused their office. The call came
again, `May! May!' `Oh, Ashley, Ashley,
' she articulated in broken and agonized
utterance. The men sprang on
the shore and in a moment more she was
clasped in the mute embrace of her lover.
eaf388.n3[3] A steady bright light is generally produced by the
concussion of rocks while the avalanche is in motion.
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CHAPTER XIII.
[figure description] Page 206.[end figure description]
Once more and for the last time change
we the scene of our eventful story to
the place where we commenced it, at
the dwelling of the heartless, despicable,
but now detected and self abased Martin.
Need we attempt to describe the
disappointment of the excited and enraged
lover, as, bursting into the house at
the head of his companions just as the
tempest struck it, he made the discovery
which the inmates had made but a moment
before, that his affianced was missing?
The utter discomfiture of Martin
and his congenial helpmate at the unlooked
for interruption of their plans,
and detection at the very eve of communicating
their business? The consternation
of Gow at being seized and
securely ironed on the spot? The bitter
upbraidings heaped by Ashley on the
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heads of the guilty and shrinking pair
for their treachery towards him, and their
oppressive cruelty and wickedness towards
the unprotected child of their
adoption? The feverish impatience with
which he paced the floor till the storm
should abate that he might fly to the
neighbors, to some of whom it was supposed
the poor girl had fled for refuge?
The hot haste with which he mounted
his horse the first moment the fury of
the tempest would permit, and rode from
house to house in the eager search? The
blank dismay and agony of heart that
overwhelmed him on finding that no one
had seen her, and that she was sheltered
by no house in the settlement?—the
prompt rallying of the startled inhabitants
the dancing of lights in every direction
as they anxiously continued the
search in house and barn, field and forest
through the gloomy hours of that
dreadful night? The consternation of
the distracted lover on coming to the
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frightful ruins of the avalanche, and the
maddening thought she might be buried
beneath them—his hasty return and procurement
of a boat to pass round the
insurmountable mass that blocked up
the road—the extasy of joy that thrilled
his bosom at the discovery of the lost
one, and the exulting throb of heart-gushing
happiness with which he and his
companion bore back the living prize,
together with the dying wretch who had
caused her misfortunes, to the nearest
house for resuscitation and refreshment
before proceeding homeward? Need we
attempt to detail all this? What reader
of imagination so dull that he cannot
better fill up for himself a picture so difficult
for pen to delineate?
It was daylight, and a beautiful and
balmy morning. The scene from Martin's
presented in every direction a gloomy
picture of the desolating ravages of
the tempest. Fields of grass and grain
lay prostrate with the earth. Fences on
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every side had been swept away by the
unexampled rise of the mountain rivulets,
and their scattered materials lay
strewn at random over the blackened
herbage of every vale. Each solitary
tree of the open grounds, left for shade
or ornament, had been hurled to the
earth in the fury of the blast. And many
a veteran hemlock and princely pine
of the surrounding forests, whose giant
forms had withstood the power of the
elements for centuries, and whose towering
tops had served from time immemorial
as the familiar guides of the woods-men
starting for their homes, had been
rent by the lightning or overthrown by
the winds, and were no longer to be
seen; while far in the blue distance at
the north a broad whitish belt marked
the fearful track of the avalanche down
the mountain.
Within the walls of the house was assembled
a group of persons as variant
and dissimilar in character and feelings,
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as the singular causes that brought them
together. On a low bench in one corner
of the room, sullen and silent, sat
Gow, heavily ironed and closely guarded
by one of the stout, athletic assistants of
the sheriff. In another place sat Martin
and his wife with their eyes cast dejectedly
on the floor, listening meekly
and with deep abasement of demeanor
to the remarks of the clergyman, who,
having remained through the night, was
now mildly setting before them not only
the wrong of the deception which had
been practised upon him in hiding the
circumstances of the projected marriage,
in the advancement of which he had been
so unwitting enlisted, but the great heinousness
of using such arts to compel a
poor unfriended orphan under their protection
to violate the vows to her lover
which they themselves had sanctioned,
and wed a man so abhorrent to her feelings
that she had braved and but too
probably met death in trying to avoid the
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[figure description] Page 211.[end figure description]
fate. Leaning pensively against the window,
stood the handsome stranger, who
yesterday joined Ashley on the road, and
who, though no one yet knew his business
or even name, had through the whole
night taken a deep and active interest in
the search for the lost favorite of the valley,
now listening to the words of the
minister addressed to the humble dupes
of the man in irons before them, and
now casting wistful and uneasy glances
through the window towards the north,
in which direction he, as well as all the
rest of the present company supposed the
search was still going on.
Presently a distant hum as of the mingled
voices of many persons approaching
with rapid steps down the road reached
the ears of the company. It came
nearer and nearer; and all, except Gow
and his guard, now hastily rose and
went out into the yard. A band of all ages
and sexes, scattered confusedly along
he road, according to their different
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[figure description] Page 212.[end figure description]
powers and disposition for speed, were flying
towards the house, headed by shrewd
David many rods in advance, exultingly
shouting with all his might, `May is found!
May is found! They are coming! they
are coming!' And the little fellow now
reaching the anxiously expectant group
at the door, and pointing to two approaching
wagons in the distance, fell down in
utter exhaustion, and gave vent to his
overflowing emotions in a burst of tears.
`Thank God!' exclaimed the stranger,
the first to find utterance in the general
emotion that seemed to spread sympathetically
from the boy to every person
present.
`Amen—and to Him be the praise!'
responded the minister in the deep and
reverential tones of his office.
The foremost wagon travelled much
faster than the other, and being considerably
forward of it, had by this time approached
to within a short distance of
the assembled company, now composed
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[figure description] Page 213.[end figure description]
of nearly all the inhabitants of the settlement,
awaiting its arrival in breathless
silence. And now it turned into the yard.
It contained Ashley and the recovered
fair one. She looked worn, and much
paler than usual, otherwise calm, though
thoughtful. Her lover lifted her from the
carriage, and advancing with her at his
side, would have spoken, but his lips began
to quiver, and waving his hand mutely
presented her to the company. The
females rushed round, and by turns convulsively
clasped her in their arms, or buried
their faces in her bosom, with no
other utterance than that which their violent
sobbing as they held her in the
mute embrace, or turned away to hide
their streaming tears, afforded. The
men stood by and looked on with less
boisterous manifestations of emotion,
though the big tears were seen starting
in many an eye, and coursing down many
a manly cheek as they silently gazed
on the moving scene before them. While
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this scene was acting, the other wagon
driven by Mundle, and containing the
wounded man stretched on a bed in the
bottom of the vehicle, the latter person
having been brought here by his own
earnest request, now slowly passed into
the yard.
`Bring out a few pillows, or something
to make a bolster,' said the sheriff, in the
tones of one accustomed to command,
`this poor wretch is very evidently near
his last breath, and has something to say
before he leaves the world forever.—
Here! help to lift him out, bed and all.
And bring out likewise the prisoner,
Gow, that they may be confronted together.
'
These orders being promptly attended
to, the wounded man was carefully lifted
from the wagon and placed in an easy
position in the open air. He first pressed
his hand to his forehead, and then
opening his eyes and looking slowly
round on the countenances of those
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[figure description] Page 215.[end figure description]
standing immediately about him, said faintly,
`I heard them say there was a stranhere,
who had enquired for May Martin,
and seemed to take an interest in her
fate. Is he now present?'
The gentleman thus enquired for, who
had hitherto stood back a silent though
attentive spectator of all that had passed,
now stepped forward.
`It is so,' said the former after letting
his languid eye rest a moment on the
face of the stranger, `it is even as I suspected—
Mr Harwood—Frank Harwood.'
`You call my name, sir,' replied the
stranger, closely scanning the pale and
livid features of the man lying before
him, `Yon call me rightly, but I do not
now recollect where, or when, I may
have met with you.'
`Do you not remember your father's
former agent for this settlement, and the
adviser and assistant of your youthful
errors?'
`Colvin!' exclaimed the stranger in
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[figure description] Page 216.[end figure description]
surprise, `Colvin!—can this be Richard
Colvin?'
At the mention of that name all the
oldest settlers stepped up and bending
over the man, looked intently in his face.
`It is,' they presently exclaimed, `it is
Colvin, but oh how changed!'
`You say truly,' rejoined the older
man after a pause in which he seemed to
be collecting his failing energies to speak
further. `You say truly of the wretched
object before you—changed indeed,
but less changed in person than in guilt.
Franklin Harwood, in May Martin, the
girl before you, behold your own daughter!
'
`My father!' uttered May in surprise.
`Her father!' exclaimed many voices
at once.
`Her father! Frank Harwood only
son of the old proprietor, her father!'—
almost shrieked both Martin and his
wife at the same instant.
`Can this gentleman be my father?'
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[figure description] Page 217.[end figure description]
again timidly asked May, looking enquiringly
to Ashley.
`It is the gentlemen of whom I spoke,
as we came along, May,' replied the latter.
`I thought—I half suspected something
like this. And why not of so near
a tie? See!' he continued with animation
waving his hand to the spectators
and pointing from the features of the father
to those of the daughter. `See!
did ever mirror that mellows while it truly
reflects the landscape—did ever mirror
throw back the softened picture more
faithfully?'
`It is even so,' said Harwood, now
stepping up and taking the hand of the unresisting
and pleased girl. `It is even so—
it can be no other than the too long
neglected child of a much injured though
lawfully wedded mother, who I trust, at
this auspicious moment is looking down
from her place in heaven to forgive and
bless, in the pleased witnessing of this
late union of father and daughter. And
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if she,' he continued with an affectionate
smile, `if she of heaven can do this,
what says my fair child of earth?'
A sweet smile broke through the starting
tears of the daughter in reply.
`Let me proceed,' said the wounded
penitent, `I know—I feel that I have
but a few more moments left me, and I
would improve them in undoing as far
as I can, the mischief I have done—I
now grieve to say, deliberately done.—
You, men and owners as you have thought
yourselves, of this settlement, you more
than others, in my dark career of crime,
have I injured. Under pretended ownership
of this valley, I gave you false
and worthless titles to the lands which
you now occupy and which, till within a
few months belonged to this gentleman's
father, who, having become apprised of
his son's former clandestine marriage and
a living offspring somewhere in Vermont,
bequeathed them all before his death, as
I accidentally learned, to this abused and
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[figure description] Page 219.[end figure description]
persecuted girl. Would to heaven I had
remained ignorant of the fact, for it led
to my second offence against you. Not
content with having once defrauded you
out of the price of your farms, and proved
treacherous to my patron to whom
I represented these lands to be so worthless,
that he on this account, and owing
to family troubles and growing infirmities,
never afterwards enquired about
them or employed others to look them
up—not content with this double fraud, I
had laid a second plan to rob you of all
these farms at a blow, or make you pay
for them again, by getting them into the
possession of my associate, and young
pupil in crime, yon prisoner, by means
of cheating the unconscious owner into
a marriage with him, before the will
should become known here, or she apprised
of her true parentage and standing,
and thus inflict another irreparable
injury on the worthy family of my early
patron. Nor was even this enough for
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[figure description] Page 220.[end figure description]
me—I must filch a large sum of money
from a number of you, in making you
pay my associate and equal sharer in all
the booty gained or to be gained by our
wicked plots, for his pretended skill in
helping you to discover a fancied treasure,
for the effecting of which I scrupled
not to expose you to the law by burying
for your finding, a few counterfeit dollars
of my own make And now having
confessed all, the only atonement I can
offer for my aggravated injuries is in declaring
the innocence of the deluded
men in possessing the false coin, and in
restoring the good money taken from
them; my share of which you will find
in my pocket—the rest about the person
of the prisoner, who I hope will speedily
forget the lessons of wickedness I have
taught him, and learn wisdom from my
melancholy fate. And as to your land I
can only recommend you to the mercy
of their now rightful owner, or Mr. Harwood,
her natural guardian, or,' he
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[figure description] Page 221.[end figure description]
continued glancing at Ashley, `or him, who,
I suppose, is soon to be her legal protector.
'
`It is but right,' said Ashley, stammering
and confused at the evident allusion
of the last speaker, and endeavoring to
withdraw his arm from his fair partner,
`it is but right—but honorable, that, in
this strangely altered aspect of affairs,
I should relinquish to Miss Harwood, as
we must now call her, all claims she may
have given me as May Martin.'
`But supposing,' replied May, still
clinging to the arm of her lover with a
countenance radient with smiles and
blushes, `but supposing Miss Harwood
should not choose to release Mr. Ashley
from his engagements to May Martin?'
`At least, May,' rejoined her lover with
a starting tear and grateful smile; `at
least May, we have a new consent to ask
and obtain now.'
`And it will not long be withheld,'
said Harwood with a gratified look.—
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`Your manly conduct now, Mr. Ashley,
has confirmed the highly favorable prepossessions
I have conceived of your
character, and even without this, I know
not that I should ever have attempted to
sunder those whom God has so evidently
put together.'
While this tender scene was enacting,
most of the settlers, astonished and dismayed
at the unexpected intelligence they
had just heard, which had swept away
their farms at a blow, had withdrawn
from the spot in silence, and were standing
in the background, with blank and
disconcerted countenances, leaving the
happy little group of father, daughter,
lover, parson, sheriff and little David,
about the only persons whose interest
were not unfavorably affected by the development,
by themselves indulging in
the joyous emotions to which the occasion
gave rise, and the three last named
especially, giving vent to their feelings in
pious ejaculations, hearty congratulations,
-- 223 --
[figure description] Page 223.[end figure description]
and half suppressed exclamations of unbounded
delight, according to their respective
characters. Their attention was
now arrested, however, by a faint groan
from the old man. They turned—he
had just breathed his last. The falling
of some body, followed by the loud
shriek of a female within the house, now
suddenly struck on their startled ears.—
All rushed to the open door. Martin
lay weltering in his blood on the floor,
with his throat cut from ear to ear, and
writhing in the agonies of a death, which,
in a paroxism of remorse, shame and desperation,
his own hand had inflicted.
-- 224 --
CONCLUSION.
[figure description] Page 224.[end figure description]
Ten years had rolled away when one
day a meek looking and plainly dressed
stranger on horseback was seen, with a
hesitating air, turning into the same yard
where the closing scene of our tale took
place. A large two story building with
corresponding out houses, now occupied
the former site of Martin's dwelling. A
sturdy young farmer, of perhaps twentyfive,
was in the now improved and handsome
yard teaching two ruddy faced little
boys, of the probable ages of six and
eight years, how to shoot with bow and
arrow.
`May I ask who at present resides here?'
timidly asked the stranger.
`Judge Ashley,' was the free reply.
`And these pretty boys—are they his?'
`They are, Sir.'
`I once knew something of the people
-- 225 --
[figure description] Page 225.[end figure description]
of this valley—and I trust I shall be excused
for making some enquiries concerning
them. How is Mr Ashley esteemed
in the world?'
`Esteemed—humph!—the very first
man in the country!'
`And your name—may I ask it!'
`Certainly—David Butler—never ashamed
to tell it in my life.'
`And have you not a farm too, by this
time, from your own earnings?'
`Hardly—from my own earnings—and
yet I have a lot of the finest wild land in
the settlement, and I'll tell you how queerly
I got it. You know, that is if you've
heard of it, that about ten years ago there
was a sort of upturning here, and change
of owners. Well, Mrs Ashley that now
is, God bless her noble heart! gave me
this lot outright for services she fancies
I did her at the time of this fracas—I
could tell you all about it, but I suppose
you have heard of the money digging affair,
and what then happened?'
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[figure description] Page 226.[end figure description]
`I have—what happened at the time,
but not after.—What became of the old
occupants who then lost their farms?'
`Why Martin, you see, being the best
judge of what he deserved, like a sensible
man, cut his throat on the spot; and
the judge and his wife thought, considering,
it would be no more than a fair
shake to take his farm, after helping off
his sweet widow—two of the money diggers
ran away more scared than hurt,
and their farms were also taken; and as
to the rest, the judge let them off easy,
paying them for their betterments[4] as much
as their whole farms were worth, 'twas
said. Well he could afford to do it, for
all the wild lands of the valley fell to him,
besides his father in law, dying soon after,
left him all his property—that is about
half of it, giving the rest to the charities.—
And now sir, seeing you have
-- 227 --
[figure description] Page 227.[end figure description]
rather a free nack of asking questions yourself,
supposing I ask you one? What is
your name?'
`Do you not recollect me?'
`Why—no—and yet seems to me I've
seen your mortal phiz somewhere.'
`You once had good reason to remember
me—and I wish I could say with you
that I have never been ashamed of my
name—I am Gow.'
`Gow! Gow! that same Gow?
who—o—o—rah! Yes, that I have had
reason to remember you—your coming
brought me that righteous lot of land
which I would be at work on to-day, if
the Judge would consent to let me leave
him. Yes, yes, you made my fortune if
the devil did send you—but what in all
nature has brought you back again?'
`Better motives, Mr. Butler, I trust,
than those which once led me here. Are
Mr. and Mrs. Ashley in the house? I
would see them at the door for one moment.
'
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[figure description] Page 228.[end figure description]
`Halloo! halloo the house! Judge
Ashley and lady, halloo!'
A middle aged gentleman with a political
newspaper in his hand and looking
a little testy at being interrupted in his
reading, hastily came to the door. A
handsome young matron some years
younger than her husband, with a chubby
black eyed infant in her arms, made
her appearance a little in the rear of the
latter.
`What now, David? is the house on
fire, or what, that you make such an outcry?
'
`Why here is one of the seven wonders
of the world!—do you know that
gentleman?'
The lady shuddered, and shrinking
back a step, whispered something in her
husband's ear.
`It cant be!' said the latter, a slight
frown passing over his brow.
`My name is Gow,' said the stranger,
riding up to the door without offering to
-- 229 --
[figure description] Page 229.[end figure description]
dismount. `You are Mr and Mrs Ashley,
I believe. She I perceive knows
me; and well may she remember me
and my former injuries. And for that
reason have I presumed to call at your
door. I ask not to enter for I am unworthy—
and yet for myself, perhaps, I
should be thankful that I was once directed
to this spot, for the lesson here received
in the awful death of my associates
in crime, and my long imprisonment that
followed, were the means I trust of plucking
me as a brand from the burning.—
For many years I have been an unworthy
preacher of the gospel, laboring in
the far west. Returning once more and
for the last time, to visit my native New
England, I have come some distance out
of my course to see you—to perform a
duty to you and to my own soul—to ask
that forgiveness which my God, I humbly
hope, has extended to one so utterly
unworthy of his mercies. Can you, sir,
forgive all the injuries I intended to you?'
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[figure description] Page 230.[end figure description]
`Freely!' replied Ashley, visibly touched
at the deep abasement of the other,
`freely, from my heart, most freely!'
`And you, dear lady, you, who have
yet more to forgive?'
`If you, sir,' said she, `have the forgiveness
of God and my husband, it shall
not long be said that you lack the forgiveness
of Mrs. Ashley for an offence
committed against May Martin—you
have it sincerely.'
`Dismount sir,' said the Judge, `walk
in and dine with us.'
`Nay, it may not be—it may not be,
worthy people. However we may forgive,
or even respect, there may yet be
associations connected with individuals
which must render their presence forever
painful. It were better that I tarried
not; but ere I leave,' he continued, riding
up close to the door step on which
the couple now stood, and extending his
hands, `I would take a hand of each in
token of peace, and as the seal of forgiveness.
'
-- 231 --
[figure description] Page 231.[end figure description]
His request being complied with, he
lifted his tearful eyes to heaven and ejaculated
in broken utterance—
`O my Father above, who could forgive
me, the vilest of the vile, and bless
one so utterly sinful and lost, wilt thou
bless and prosper these thy servants—
their little ones and all that is theirs—not
only in the things of this life, but in that
light and love which is here our only durable
happiness, and hereafter our heaven.
'
Casting one long and mournful look
on the happy pair, and bowing a mute
farewell, he slowly rode away and was
seen no more.
eaf388.n4[4] This word for improvements made on lands, and frequently
found on the Vermont Statute Book, was, we believe,
coined by the legislature of that state, but whether
in a legislative or literary capacity we never understood.
